NVIDIA and SGI Align

Alowishus writes "Another nail in 3Dfx's coffin? NVIDIA and SGI team up - as a result, SGI drops their pending patent infringement suit and both companies swap patent portfolios. Press release is here. " I'm not really sure what to think of this - I can't see SGI giving technology to nVidia that would let us x86 users all have the same cards as their users...Is it just a way to get rid of the lawsuit? Maybe NVIDIA's manufacturing capabilities?

Comments

Actually...

[Bill Currie]

I can see SGI sharing tech with NVIDIA that will allow x86 users the same cards as SGI users. Why? It's not just the video card that makes SGIs good boxes, but the rest of the hardware as well. In fact, I wouldn't be at all supprised to see full specs and/or supurb Linux drivers come out of this. Hardware sales is hardware sales. I don't think it really matters who thier customers are so long as they exist in the first place.

Of course, I could very easily be wrong (cf my CPU speed post in the quake discussion:) as I have never used (or seen? there were some interesting boxen at my previous employment) an SGI box.

Re:Cheap SGI cards for all?

[sjames]

They may be looking to the low end to shore up stability. The high end market is a big money maker because of the margins there, but sales are sporadic and volume is low. The low end makes less money for the same amount of work, but the higher volume makes for a more stable income.

Your second point is right on IMHO. With GHz PCs due by Q4, the manufacturers will be looking at bus archetecture next. SGIs primary advantage right now (in workstations) is their bus archetecture. Their high end is cluster technology (which in a sense, goes back to bus archetecture!). That advantage is being eroded slowly but surely by commodity supercomputing.

Re:IPOdot

[mvw]

The most important bit of the n-vidia/SGI story is that two former rivals went from competition to cooperation. It was not one of those '[open source] company XYZ goes IPO - quelle surprise' stories. => off topic.

Two remarks about the n-vidia/SGI competition:

1. PCs got a foot in the workstation market:
A former colleague of mine, he is mechanical engineer, contracts in the realm of Finite Elements simulations (thermal stress analysis of turbine blades mostly). He owns some SGI workstations but switched to PC boxes (under NT) equipped with standard graphics boards because he got sufficient visualization powerfor less than half what the SGIs costed. This was the situation in 1997, I would not be surprised if PCs are even more attractive today.

2. I remember having read on riva zone that some of the n-vidia developers were former SGI employees. So it is likely that they brought some trade secrets er.. expertise over. So we had kind of a personal relationship between both companies already.

I believe we end user will benefit, after all this still is one of the most competetive markets.

What makes SGI great graphics machines...

[The Dodger]

It's not just the video card that makes SGIs good boxes...

Exactly. One of SG's strengths in the workstation market has long been their ability to shift data around the motherboard at very high speeds. Have a look at Ars Technica's article about the new SGI NT machines for some information on the sort of approach SG have to designing boxes.

Best of all, they're planning to support Linux on this range of beasts!

The Dodger

Another clear winner for Open Source

[Tuross]

Both companies have embraced Open Source (even if somewhat reservedly, which is to be expected of long-time commercial organisations anyway) and look what benefits the end user is getting already - drivers with source for some of the best 2D/3D cards on the market, GLX, and now these companies are putting aside their differences and working together to create something great for the end user in time to come. Perhaps a cheap SGI Visual Workstation with a 96Mb TNT3? :-) Well, I can dream can't I?
This is The Way It Should Be (tm) and these companies deserve our fullest support.

United we stand, divided we fall. Total World Domination is achieved through the uniting of hardware vendors and software authors to produce IT solutions that are powerful, flexible and free. Free in the sense of freedom, not monetary cost.

Who are SGI's customers?

[LL]

To understand the move, you have to realise what business SGI is in. Their customer base is
a) Big Data (Federal/Banks/Servers)
b) Complex Graphics (Entertainment)
c) Raw Science (Universities/Medical)

Finito.

Selling piddly graphics cards (that is compared with Infinite Reality Engine++ !! ... drool) for a high volume, fad-driven market is most definitely not their market.

What they are doing with their Linux strategy (and to some extent ditto for BigBlueIBM) is creating a scorched earth policy by releasing source code in the low-end server/workstation market to prevent certain software/hardware companies (you know who) from cutting into their margins and preparing a migration path from their proprietary Unices to value-added Linux components/tuning. You can see it in their MIPS processor strategy, developing for high-end then migrating to the embedded market (guess what's in your routers and printers?) once the R&D dollars are written off.

Anything that is a distraction at this point in time when their CEO is still turning the company around is a waste of energy. Despite this forum's fascination with technology, you have to understand that companies are hard-nosed businesses with zero tolerance for sentimental gestures. You get paid money for doing the things that are hard and other people are willing to pay money for, not sexy 3D games which take up a disproportionate amount of space on freshmeat.

When you understand the difference between work and play (or are rich enough not to care), then you can pontificate to your heart's content.

LL

Cheap SGI cards for all?

[chris.bitmead]

Would SGI want x86 users to have SGI quality graphics? I would say yes because...

There's more money in selling a million cheap x86 cards than a couple of thousand expensive worstation cards.

Specialised hardware is a bad bet in the long term. Eventually you'll be put out of business by someone selling a consumer version that does everything you want at 1/10 the price. To win long term you've got to go mainstream and get maximum market share.

SGI and NVidia both win

[throx]

This deal makes a lot of sense to me. SGI is moving down into the workstation market (look at the Visual Workstation as the first of many) and have been pushing the idea lately that they are going to embrace x86 systems as their low end solution - running both NT and Linux.

So, what does SGI get out of this: A great deal with the best video card manufacturer around and the freedom to develop their own custom chips for the higher end of the market. The low end cards (nVidia, ATI, 3dfx etc) have been creeping up farther in performance in much the same way the desktop PC market has been creeping up in performace. Without moves like this, SGI faces a rapidly contracting niche market with no room to move in the future.

nVidia gets out of a lawsuit which would have been very costly, and gets to be associated with the 'best' name in the business - SGI. nVidia probably gets a hand in on the Farenheit project which is likely to be a prettly big thing.

All in all, it sounds like a win-win situation. I was concerned about SGI's future about this time last year, but with their turnaround into the x86 market and their embracing of the best OSes in that market (NT and Linux) followed by their capturing a deal with the best 3D chip manufacturer (nVidia), I think they have a very bright future across the spectrum of 3D visual computing.

John Wiltshire