If you have any familiarity with SGI, it's half dead. People are leaving--best people.
If you have any familiatity with SGI, you'd realise they posted $158 million *NET* profit for last quarter.
Strange behaviour for a corporation which is supposed to be half dead. Perhaps someone forgot to tell them this?
Heck, SGI can't even get their Oracle database that holds customer data and all the servicing information and all to work with a reasonable latency (say, give a response consistantly under one minute).
So who the hell wants to run an Oracle database on an SGI? Oracle databases are boring grunt work fit for Suns, not high-performance SGIs.
Seriously, I suggest you acquaint yourself with MediaBase, an app that finds itself more than suitable runnging on an SGI server.
Another poster suggests that they are not running *BSD because of driver & applications issues. I do not think it is relevant. The decision to ship Linux boxes was not made by a technical person
How doe we know this? Granted, FreeBSD is open source, but I think it's far too likely that most of the work had been done already--on the engineers' own time with Linux. This is mighty fast turnaround time for a server-class computer for SGI.
I figure time has the most to do with it. Eventually, I'd expect FreeBSD to be up and running on one of these servers.
Face it: They're not shipping Linux because Linux is good. They're not shipping Linux because of any strategic alliances (they have none at the moment, the industry bails out, the place where I work throws away Challenge XLs--have you ever seen a Challenge XL?).
*horrified gasp* Are you kidding! Are they insane? Oh, the *humanity*!
Save me one! I'll pay for shipping! Those are fabulous machines (consume more power than godknowswhat, but *still!*)
In closing, however: I find your comments largely flawed and irrelevant to SGI, a company which has performed miracles both technical and visual (and now, coporate). People have been insisting that SGI is dead for nearly two years now.
I think it's time for an acceptance of reality: SGI thrives, and you are quite simply wrong, and have been wrong all along.
Will they be cutting back on the Video and Audio abilities?
If SGI follows past practice, then I would say yes, but only as applicable to making the server a functional workstation: SGI servers have almost always been headless. Video out on a Challenge (and most of the Orgin series) was a port for a dumb terminal.
But for media serving, I would imagine it would be more than up to the task.
Um, I doubt it. Maybe games are everything for people who play them, but for those of us who want to get any work done, these cards are worthless.
SGI still has far, far better hardware for OGL accelleration when it comes to geometry performance.
This is similar to Tim Sweeny's naive comments on his Unreal website concerning el cheapo gfx cards for gamining eating SGI's high-end ('real') market...
some people deserve to be unemployed and starving. it's what we call evolution. i'm serious.
Actually, that's Social Darwinism. It has nothing to do with evolution, and is primarily the product of apologist thinking regarding the disadvantaged.
And it hews very closely to eugenics, which explains its unpopularity amongst the itelligentsia.
Much like pampheleteers who insist the Nazi Holocaust nver happened.
Both of you are wrong. I suggest you examine the specifications on the Visual Workstations before jumping to the erroneous comclusion that they are anything like Dells or Compaqs.
The SGI VWS outclasses anything produced by traditional PC manufacturers.
IRIX isn't dying. Linux easily has a ways to go before it appoaches the functionality of IRIX.
Besides, what is up with everyone expecting that Linux must match every UNIX available? Why can't each be suited to a particular task and let it go at that?
I can only image how bored I'd get with SGIs if SGI spent all its time trying to make IRIX run more like Solaris...
But I'll sure bet at least some of the bootleggers paid to get into the concerts in the first place. And then here's where the analogy really falls apart: how good do you think a 3rd generation audio tape is going to be?
(Although, from a pure coinage issue, I could make that out to mean the opposite of 'surge,' with intent to mean listless, loagy, or lethargic, thus conveying the exact opposite while making a parallel construction from the word.)
Well only one OS has the security of OpenBSD, only Solaris can scale on the big boxes. Most mainframes only have one OS. FreeBSD has the best stability and speed for x86 type serving. You get the idea.
But this is precisely what the author is talking about: FreeBSD has only the security that FreeBSD can provide, and Solaris is most definitely not the only OS that scales well (c.f. SGI's IRIX and UNICOS, Digital UNIX, &c.).
To 'typecast' is to limit your own horizons, and potentially lock yourself into a state of mind that might leave you in the lurge should a vendor never actually get around to implementing features its competitors have had for years (which is why IRIX surpassed Solaris as a 64-bit OS: SGI was one of the first on the block. I think only Digital had SGI beat).
SGI doesn't really own OGL in the sense of a proprietary ownership. Rather SGI (along with every other major UNIX workstation vendor) oversees the standard.
Re:The SGI Swan Song, their last ditch effort.
on
SGI open-sourcing XFS
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· Score: 1
They used to be the state of the art bad-ass workstations.
And yet, they still do. I'm sorry, but SGI's closes gfx workstation competitor remains Intergraph. (Sun? Gimme a break. Maybe when Sun actually offers something in the same league as the original Onyx I'll reconsider. Sun sells boring-flavored business workstations.)
If you think SGIs sell poorly, perhaps you should check on how Intergraph's sales are doing.
I don't know why SGI machines don't sell better. I still think they offer the best possible price performance for graphics (and server and computational performance) than anything else out there.
I as a previous SGI fan felt isolated by the jump to NT, and I wasn't alone. Their NT workstations just didn't sell as much as they wanted, so now their jumping onto the Linux bandwagon.
They haven't even been out a year. Give 'em a chance.
And how do you know anyway? Facts and figs, please.
And, why should anyone have felt *isolated* by SGI's adoption (note the word adoption instead of *jumped*) of NT? I don't get it. Maybe it's just because I didn't care.
Not quite anymore, actually. SGI spun off MIPS into its own company and is now building servers based on Intel chips with SGI-style motherboards running Windows NT, if I understand correctly.
MIPS was never spun off, because it was never *absorbed*. SGI purchased MIPS in the early 90s, and only recently divested all but 20% of its stake in the company.
The CPU division responsible for the Rx-thousand series CPU is internal to SGI now.
And, though SGI has announced NT server, it has yet to make any. Most of its sales still have RISC CPUs in them.
Oh well, even though they're not announcing it, I guess we should assume that IRIX is officially dead.
If they didn't officially announce it, why should anyone assume this? I mean, given the MIPS processor line has been extended at least through the R14000?
Hell, even on Gate's own turf Lucas bested him: Pixar.
Sorry to disapoint you, but Lucas doesn't own or run Pixar, and hasn't since 1986, right about the time when Steve Jobs founded the company. (Yes, that Steve.) What Pixar was before the sale to Jobs was a computer animation dept. of ILM.
(Ad hominem subject lines: will Toys > Us be suing me?)
Tape is still cheaper than HDs for backup. Not everyone finds it tolerable to buy from Bob's Big Discount Drive Book for el cheapo solutions. Imagine storing sequential changes over the course of a year to 1.2 Terabytes of data. How are HDs cheaper? Storing the damn things alone will be problematic. Best to stick with tape, especially if you want a frozen record of prior changes made to an evolving data set over the course of a certain amount of time (months, years, or even a decade or two).
And for some, "works mostly OK for the most part" simply isn't equivalent to "works right now, for the whole part."
I'd like to say something to all the posters here who have been on about SGI's new logo.
Unless you're a total neophyte hobbyist, you don't buy computer systems like SGIs for the badging they've got--you buy it because of what's inside. Things like the CPU, the graphics, the software you're using or planning to use. Things of that sort will help you get things accomplished (i.e. help solve those problems you need a computer for in the first place)--the logo on the outside (and the color of the plastic casing) don't really help all that much.
Do have your moment of silence. It's a good logo, after all, but at least be reasonable about it.
But then, I care. Really.
PS: For those who believe that the logo change will spiral the company into some sort of early grave, you've been wrong about that since 1995, and given your current track record on this issue, you're still likely to be wrong. If something as subtle and as largely irrelevant as a change of logo is enough to send you carping off about how a $5 billion/year company is somehow magically going to tank tommorrow, I'm sorry, but I think you've had it in for the company just because it's SGI.
The logos aren't *that* important. The technology is, or it's supposed to be. But if I *did* have it my way, I'd redo the whole thing in Cyrillic (http://www.stonebug.net/sgi_new.jpg), so screw you.
Last I'd heard, they were using a Challenge S with 160 MB/RAM and a 16 GB RAID--for everything but the RAM and the RAID, their lowest, entry-level server.
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None of the vendors you mention offer what SGI does.
I suggest you examine SGI's website and consider the Infinite Reality Monster and the future potential of scaling to 512+ processors reason enough.
On this end, there are those of us who like running Alias (Maya), Lightwave, and Softimage: apps which don't run on SGI's ersatz competition.
Yes, well, but if one needs binary comaptibility with x86, it's easier to have a box built around same.
If you have any familiarity with SGI, it's half dead. People are leaving--best people.
If you have any familiatity with SGI, you'd realise they posted $158 million *NET* profit for last quarter.
Strange behaviour for a corporation which is supposed to be half dead. Perhaps someone forgot to tell them this?
Heck, SGI can't even get their Oracle database that holds customer data and all the servicing information and all to work with a reasonable latency (say, give a response consistantly under one minute).
So who the hell wants to run an Oracle database on an SGI? Oracle databases are boring grunt work fit for Suns, not high-performance SGIs.
Seriously, I suggest you acquaint yourself with MediaBase, an app that finds itself more than suitable runnging on an SGI server.
Another poster suggests that they are not running *BSD because of driver & applications issues. I do not think it is relevant. The decision to ship Linux boxes was not made by a technical person
How doe we know this? Granted, FreeBSD is open source, but I think it's far too likely that most of the work had been done already--on the engineers' own time with Linux. This is mighty fast turnaround time for a server-class computer for SGI.
I figure time has the most to do with it. Eventually, I'd expect FreeBSD to be up and running on one of these servers.
Face it: They're not shipping Linux because Linux is good. They're not shipping Linux because of any strategic alliances (they have none at the moment, the industry bails out, the place where I work throws away Challenge XLs--have you ever seen a Challenge XL?).
*horrified gasp* Are you kidding! Are they insane? Oh, the *humanity*!
Save me one! I'll pay for shipping! Those are fabulous machines (consume more power than godknowswhat, but *still!*)
In closing, however: I find your comments largely flawed and irrelevant to SGI, a company which has performed miracles both technical and visual (and now, coporate). People have been insisting that SGI is dead for nearly two years now.
I think it's time for an acceptance of reality: SGI thrives, and you are quite simply wrong, and have been wrong all along.
_
Will they use the Cobalt Chipset?
On a server? Are you kidding? What on earth for?
Will they be cutting back on the Video and Audio abilities?
If SGI follows past practice, then I would say yes, but only as applicable to making the server a functional workstation: SGI servers have almost always been headless. Video out on a Challenge (and most of the Orgin series) was a port for a dumb terminal.
But for media serving, I would imagine it would be more than up to the task.
As much as I'd like to believe this, I think that contract provisions such as his would have come up in US vs. Microsoft.
That no representative of SGI has been called as a witness for the DOJ has no bearing on it then?
SGI gets faster 3dAccellerators
Um, I doubt it. Maybe games are everything for people who play them, but for those of us who want to get any work done, these cards are worthless.
SGI still has far, far better hardware for OGL accelleration when it comes to geometry performance.
This is similar to Tim Sweeny's naive comments on his Unreal website concerning el cheapo gfx cards for gamining eating SGI's high-end ('real') market...
some people deserve to be unemployed and starving. it's what we call evolution. i'm serious.
Actually, that's Social Darwinism. It has nothing to do with evolution, and is primarily the product of apologist thinking regarding the disadvantaged.
And it hews very closely to eugenics, which explains its unpopularity amongst the itelligentsia.
Much like pampheleteers who insist the Nazi Holocaust nver happened.
Both of you are wrong. I suggest you examine the specifications on the Visual Workstations before jumping to the erroneous comclusion that they are anything like Dells or Compaqs.
The SGI VWS outclasses anything produced by traditional PC manufacturers.
I'd buy one in an instant if I knew it would run.
How much effort would there be in porting something like this, since it seems to be pretty much up to Be to do it.
IRIX isn't dying. Linux easily has a ways to go before it appoaches the functionality of IRIX.
Besides, what is up with everyone expecting that Linux must match every UNIX available? Why can't each be suited to a particular task and let it go at that?
I can only image how bored I'd get with SGIs if SGI spent all its time trying to make IRIX run more like Solaris...
Goliath One, meet Goliaths Two through Three.
Sigh.
But I'll sure bet at least some of the bootleggers paid to get into the concerts in the first place. And then here's where the analogy really falls apart: how good do you think a 3rd generation audio tape is going to be?
...might leave you in the lurge...
I meant LURCH.
Oy.
(Although, from a pure coinage issue, I could make that out to mean the opposite of 'surge,' with intent to mean listless, loagy, or lethargic, thus conveying the exact opposite while making a parallel construction from the word.)
Back to coffee for me...
Well only one OS has the security of OpenBSD, only Solaris can scale on the big boxes. Most mainframes only have one OS. FreeBSD has the best stability and speed for x86 type serving. You get the idea.
But this is precisely what the author is talking about: FreeBSD has only the security that FreeBSD can provide, and Solaris is most definitely not the only OS that scales well (c.f. SGI's IRIX and UNICOS, Digital UNIX, &c.).
To 'typecast' is to limit your own horizons, and potentially lock yourself into a state of mind that might leave you in the lurge should a vendor never actually get around to implementing features its competitors have had for years (which is why IRIX surpassed Solaris as a 64-bit OS: SGI was one of the first on the block. I think only Digital had SGI beat).
That sort of narrow thinking could cost you.
SGI doesn't really own OGL in the sense of a proprietary ownership. Rather SGI (along with every other major UNIX workstation vendor) oversees the standard.
They used to be the state of the art bad-ass workstations.
And yet, they still do. I'm sorry, but SGI's closes gfx workstation competitor remains Intergraph. (Sun? Gimme a break. Maybe when Sun actually offers something in the same league as the original Onyx I'll reconsider. Sun sells boring-flavored business workstations.)
If you think SGIs sell poorly, perhaps you should check on how Intergraph's sales are doing.
I don't know why SGI machines don't sell better. I still think they offer the best possible price performance for graphics (and server and computational performance) than anything else out there.
I as a previous SGI fan felt isolated by the jump to NT, and I wasn't alone. Their NT workstations just didn't sell as much as they wanted, so now their jumping onto the Linux bandwagon.
They haven't even been out a year. Give 'em a chance.
And how do you know anyway? Facts and figs, please.
And, why should anyone have felt *isolated* by SGI's adoption (note the word adoption instead of *jumped*) of NT? I don't get it. Maybe it's just because I didn't care.
Great! Another clueless comment from a failing wannabe pundit!
Not quite anymore, actually. SGI spun off MIPS into its own company and is now building servers based on Intel chips with SGI-style motherboards running Windows NT, if I understand correctly.
MIPS was never spun off, because it was never *absorbed*. SGI purchased MIPS in the early 90s, and only recently divested all but 20% of its stake in the company.
The CPU division responsible for the Rx-thousand series CPU is internal to SGI now.
And, though SGI has announced NT server, it has yet to make any. Most of its sales still have RISC CPUs in them.
Oh well, even though they're not announcing it, I guess we should assume that IRIX is officially dead.
If they didn't officially announce it, why should anyone assume this? I mean, given the MIPS processor line has been extended at least through the R14000?
Personally, I prefer IRIX to Linux. Free or not.
Hell, even on Gate's own turf Lucas bested him: Pixar.
Sorry to disapoint you, but Lucas doesn't own or run Pixar, and hasn't since 1986, right about the time when Steve Jobs founded the company. (Yes, that Steve.) What Pixar was before the sale to Jobs was a computer animation dept. of ILM.
(Ad hominem subject lines: will Toys > Us be suing me?)
Tape is still cheaper than HDs for backup. Not everyone finds it tolerable to buy from Bob's Big Discount Drive Book for el cheapo solutions. Imagine storing sequential changes over the course of a year to 1.2 Terabytes of data. How are HDs cheaper? Storing the damn things alone will be problematic. Best to stick with tape, especially if you want a frozen record of prior changes made to an evolving data set over the course of a certain amount of time (months, years, or even a decade or two).
And for some, "works mostly OK for the most part" simply isn't equivalent to "works right now, for the whole part."
3.2 GB/second is impressive if you know *anything* about modern PC limitations.
If you don't know [anything], then I can see how that might be pretty boring to you.
This explains why the only truly useful links out of a session with AltaVista were buried three pages deep.
I'd like to say something to all the posters here who have been on about SGI's new logo.
Unless you're a total neophyte hobbyist, you don't buy computer systems like SGIs for the badging they've got--you buy it because of what's inside. Things like the CPU, the graphics, the software you're using or planning to use. Things of that sort will help you get things accomplished (i.e. help solve those problems you need a computer for in the first place)--the logo on the outside (and the color of the plastic casing) don't really help all that much.
Do have your moment of silence. It's a good logo, after all, but at least be reasonable about it.
But then, I care. Really.
PS: For those who believe that the logo change will spiral the company into some sort of early grave, you've been wrong about that since 1995, and given your current track record on this issue, you're still likely to be wrong. If something as subtle and as largely irrelevant as a change of logo is enough to send you carping off about how a $5 billion/year company is somehow magically going to tank tommorrow, I'm sorry, but I think you've had it in for the company just because it's SGI.
The logos aren't *that* important. The technology is, or it's supposed to be. But if I *did* have it my way, I'd redo the whole thing in Cyrillic (http://www.stonebug.net/sgi_new.jpg), so screw you.
God, I'm canktankerous today.
Last I'd heard, they were using a Challenge S with 160 MB/RAM and a 16 GB RAID--for everything but the RAM and the RAID, their lowest, entry-level server.
If that's still the case, I'm hardly surprised.