SGI Announces New Strategy and Alliance

the_demiurge writes "SGI has three press releases on their site showing the new Positions for the Future. They include making separate divisions for the Cray line and the Visual Workstations and also more details on the 'strategic alliance' with NVIDIA." SGI is also getting into Open Source in a big way. Check this page for all sorts of cool stuff.

Comments

Re:GNU/Linux ? SGI/Linux

[tgd]

Not exactly. Kernel changes involving changes to existing modules is required by GPL.

Choosing to not compile a module and replacing it with a closed-source binary-only version is allowed, and a way I'd guess some companies may choose to go in the future to provide value-add.

And I don't necessarily think that's a *bad* thing.

Yea, but

[BadlandZ]

There is an overlapping area between Linux and IRIX, and that's where I think most people have problems. Specifically, the sub $10,000 systems with less than 4 CPU's. Linux does OK on a dual Xeon, and the low end on MIPS has a very high price tag. Then, on the low end of MIPS add a IRIX support contract, and at that point Linux has an edge.

Take the something from the high end at VAResearch, and compared it to a low end SGI (maybe an O2). But don't forget the hidden costs (SGI's wonderful support contracts, fees, licences for this and that, etc...).

That's the area where I have seen people pay for the SGI name, but would have been better served with a Linux box. But, heh... we still have a Personal Iris in use here, because it works better as a Xtermial than a Linux box (OpenGL support for one reason, graphics in general, although a good 486 will blow it out of the water for CPU preformance).

Re:Yea, but

[IntlHarvester]

What makes you think that a SGI Linux support contract is going to be any cheaper than an Irix Support Contract?

We keep hearing that the money in Open Source is in services, and if you're going to spend the dough on an SGI Linux box, you probably are going to want SGI to support it.
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more links

[ChrisRijk]

Register article
news.com article
AP Business article on Yahoo

XFS is being released GPL

[Jordy]

I submitted this earlier today, but it didn't get posted.

A message on the XFS Open Source Site has some new information. XFS is going to be released under the GPL.

See their PDF Doc on what this release will cover. It looks like they are holding back the real-time multimedia features of XFS, but that's about it.

Some source is already available for download, the rest will be up as soon as they clean up the source code for GPL'ing.

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Re:One thought...

[Jordy]

Current features include:

• 9 exabytes file size limitation
• Near-raw I/O performance. An SGI Origin 2000 was able to reach 4 GB/s (rw) on 704 disks to one multithreaded process.
• Quick Recovery, less than a second after an unexpected interruption regardless of the number of files it is managing. (no more fsck'ing fsck :)
• File system size limitation of 18 exabytes
• Hierarchial storage (HSMs, DMF)
• Table structures implemented in b-trees for fast searches and space allocation
• Block sizes are 512 bytes to 64 KB for normal data, up to 1 MB for real-time data.

I hope that clears it up.

As far as a converter, well... probably not for a while.


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It won't be cheap, but it must be free

[BadlandZ]

Well, currentlly, to get the newer versions of IRIX you need a support contract. Sure, they will probably have one for Linux. How are they going to not be in violation of GPL and prevent you from upgrading Linux on your own without paying them?

How's that for Buzzword Bingo?

[binarybits]

Building on changes that started 18 months ago, SGI today announces a series of initiatives and partnerships that will enhance the company's position as the leader in high-performance and visual computing. These actions will accelerate SGI's transition from a vertically integrated company to one committed to broadening its market reach by leveraging its technology through new partnerships with industry leaders.

I realize that's the opening paragraph of the press release, so we'd expect it to be vague. But if you replace the "SGI" with another name, it could be used to describe the re-org of any high-tech company. I'm in awe of the ability of marketroids to come up with completely meaningless fluff like this.

Analysis

[The Dodger]

Lots of people seem to be slating SGI recently, both for their recent performance and for the radical steps they're taking to turn themselves around and get back to being profitable.

Nobody can deny that SGI's performance over the last few years hasn't been terrific. Their once-profitable principle strategy of selling high-performance graphics workstations became stale as PC technology moved forward, with 3D chipsets, etc. which could compete with SGI products like the O2.

Their servers are now regarded as being relatively over-priced and not worth the extra performance (e.g. memory bandwidth, etc.) that they feature.

SGI was originally a company which developed cool technology. They parlayed that into a range of products which, initially, found a receptive market. Since then, however, the market has moved forward, but SGI have failed to move fast enough to keep up with it.

The plan accelerates SGI's transition from a vertically integrated company to one committed to broadening its market reach by leveraging its technology through strategic partnerships with industry leaders.

What this says to me is that they're refocusing on technology - i.e. coming up with cool stuff, basically - and moving away from building their own products towards selling the technologies they develop to other companies, in the same way as companies like Creative developed technologies like Sound Blaster and marketed them in partnership with other companies.

They're taking radical moves, shedding divisions which aren't profitable enough or which don't form part of this strategy and embracing new developments, such as Linux. The Cray and Visual Workstation lines are being seperated as a precursor to possible sale to a third-party who will continue to work with SGI in developing the product lines. This implies that SGI will develop the technology, leaving someone else to worry about the actual box-shifting.

All of this is pretty much a textbook business strategy for conducting a turnaround of an unprofitable company which had begun to lose touch with the market.

MrEd just described this announcement as the "last gasp of a giant" and whilst I would agree that we are witnessing the end of the old Silicon Graphics, Inc., I'd say we're about to witness the rebirth of a new SGI.

I think that we're going to see a leaner, fitter, better company emerge from this reorganisation, slimmed down and better able to move quickly and take advantage of developments in an industry which is probably the fastest-moving in the world. I can see SGI becoming a significant developer of technology and a significant player in the future development of Linux, and I think that in a few years, we'll be recognising that this was, in fact, the right thing for SGI to do.

D.
..is for Devious.

Call 911

[BadlandZ]

SGI is going to throw a lot of thier long term high dollar customers into total shock. I know a couple people personally who just bought new SGI's within the last year and don't want anything to do with Linux. :-) Heh...

Oh, this will be fun... Finally I will get to say "I told you so" to some people who thought SGI was the only way to go, and Linux wasn't even something they could consider.

What I wanna know is how the SGI ISV's are going to handle this news. Like MSI who have always been "we only port to IRIX" kind of people.

MSI comments explained...

[BadlandZ]

Actually, I am refering specificly to thier Insight package that they aquired when they bought out BioSym, and which has always only been an IRIX product. MSI has ported some of thier products to other OS's, so that wasn't a totally fair comment.