SGI in pain
One of the coolest computer companies is in PAIN: SGI. I think apple should take a risk and invest a couple of millons and get SGI, transform SGI into a company named Apple Entreprise and use that amazing techology from SGI to benefit apple.
slowly migrate thier servers from Linux to Macos X server, and incorporate all SGI tech into macos X. High performance software vendors will start to port to macos X.
slowly migrate thier servers from Linux to Macos X server, and incorporate all SGI tech into macos X. High performance software vendors will start to port to macos X.
Comments
SGI had some cool stuff back in the 90s, but that was it.
SGI still rocks the house! it is too sad they are in pain, but who said life was fair! =D
Silicon Graphics will start showing off the Altix 4000 Monday, the second generation of the company's technical computing machines based on the Linux operating system and Itanium processors.
http://news.com.com/SGI+to+show+next...l?tag=nefd.top
cool!
SGI needs to sell also workstations, the deskside Linux/Itanuim2 Machines rock the house, maybe it is time to kill the IRIX based workstations and release someother Itanium bases workstation....
If they really want to make a come back there going to have to do something thats going to but the rest of the industry in awe again.
Can anyone here remember theyre O2 windows 95 box?
What it is, is that theyre just a nother company that are making multi cpu opteron or xeon boxes now. Where are the days when they custom built 32+ cpu RISC systems. Pre year 2000 SGI's system's were something to be in awe about but you can now build your own quad cpu or if you want it quad graphic card system, want a render farm, build or buy multiple copies of the above system network them and your done. My two cents.
yeah... i had a mathematics subject practical back in brisbane, australia, for uni in 1996-1998 or somewhere around there. the maths subject was the suXX0rs but it was awesome to sit down in front of the SGI knowing it was a genuine SGI RISC system, was kinda even more exciting than the macs they had in some science computer labs at my uni...
If they really want to make a come back there going to have to do something thats going to but the rest of the industry in awe again.
most certainly, with apple quad powermac g5s and opteron farms, and supercomputing clusters with xserve g5s, and ibm stuff rounding out the majority of supercomputers, SGI needs some hard core stuff if they want to get back in the game. to which i ask, what the F8** happened to their 1999-2005 R&D? did they just get swept up in the dotcom boom or what?
Can anyone here remember theyre O2 windows 95 box?
heh. very vaguely. not very successful if i remember, but was it supposed to be able to dual boot windows and SGI Unix (was it called IRIX or something like that?)
"SGI was the high-bandwidth, visualization-rich, media-savvy computer systems company that flourished in a decade when media pundits clamored for a winner in what they called "the convergence space". SGI obliged, and spared nothing - for a while its budgets were flush for R&D and fancy architecture."
indeed, it was definitely what lured me to silicon valley, reading about them in the 90's. while my high skool friends (and later a few kids at uni) laughed at me and my dreams..
"While other companies could barely muster a showroom, SGI built expensive "theatres" to showcase its kit, and it worked: there was no shortage of customers in data mining, government, science research and Hollywood to buy SGI's first class systems.
But as one reader who mournfully passed on the news to us tells it -
"SGI had the most wonderful technology coupled with lethally inept management. I bought one of their monster servers to do genetics research in the late 90s and they walked all over every other vendor we saw. These guys were the bomb where HPC was concerned."
so what the hell happened? death by the stupid committee??
"Then came a few years of pure craziness: the workstations running a special version of NT; the Itanium clusters; abysmal quality control on the O2 and Octane workstations; selling off their great broadcast technology to Kasenna; ignoring the inroads that Linux was making into render farms."
yup, that's pretty much it...
"Oh, SGI, we loved you and you screwed up. Bigtime."
SGI failed to foresee not only the rise of cheap, commoditized render farms running Linux but the astonishing increases in 3D graphics performance from NVidia, available at low cost to any PC user. So TV viewers tuning into 2003's network spectacular - the US invasion of Iraq - saw maps rendered not on Onyx clusters but on Keyhole's simple PC technology, over the web. Keyhole was started by, and largely staffed by former SGI employees.
Today Google occupies the place in the popular media's consciousness as the wish fulfillment company, the place where all dreams come true. And Google also occupies SGI's spectacular high tech offices by the sand dunes on Shoreline Boulevard. And Google bought Keyhole, and renamed it, and made available to you as "Google Earth".
Are those Shoreline dunes haunted? Surely not. But SGI's spectacular rise and fall should give any company so drunk on its own technical prowess and media kudos, just a moment's pause for thought."
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...i_penny_stock/