Shame, not unexpected tho.. At least their not done for yet.

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Everything you say will be misquoted and used against you..
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Agreed. IMHO, this could be Sun in a few years if they don't find some new computing holy grail!

It was only some 13 years ago that I remember seeing an SGI workstation at a show running at 200Mhz, demoing jaw-dropping realtime surface mapped animations in a virtual flight sim, when the best we could get our hands on was a mear 20-33mhz on our 80386/68030 systems.

Mind you, at the time these Irix systems could be had for only a cool $200,000USD! And this was before getting the Alias modeler and animator software, which would set you back another $60,000USD! ;^)

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When swimming with sharks, make sure to bring lots of band-aids...

Nope, not unexpected at all, and agree regarding Sun as well. SGI's been in worse shape than Sun for some time now, as they (besides Cray) have been more focused on the workstation market in their products, where x86 started to eat away at first.

Sun has some hope of turning around with Solaris x86, as well as their nicely priced AMD based offerings, and a few Java Desktop deals happening...hopefully it's not too late for Sun.

Dunno about SGI though, Irix hasn't been a 'demanded' platform anywhere I've worked in years now

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

Its still fun to play with though. Irix that is.

yeah, and fast. For a *nix anyhow. I think Apple should buy them and use their custom Xserver for MacOS

Last edited by Legion on 09-May-2006 at 04:32 AM.

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...wait... what?

I disagree about Sun, Sun has big-Iron SPARC systems running Solaris that don't look like going anywhere soon, they just intoduced a low end SPARC box that really is revolutionary for the market it is aimed at (web serving) and then they have their really impressive "galaxy" AMD64 boxes for everyone else in between. Solaris also runs on standard x86 boxes from other vendors and is now open source which gave them a lot of PR not to mention potential for support contracts. They also have the Java software stack which is something that SGI lacks (They don't even make a compiler anymore, their IA64/Linux machines use GCC and their patches are all open sourced), once they've sold you the big box and the support contract they ahve to wait untill you need to buy another one, and for the kind of money these systems cost that can be a long time. Of course they have other lines of revenue such as consulting and their big screen display centres but they are a small player in those markets and only people that use SGI kit elsewhere are likely to be interested.
SGI on the other hand had to maintain a legacy system (MIPS/Irix) while trying to transition people to IA64/Linux boxes, most people simply went to Linux but without the IA64 bit due to its dismally low performance (particularly for the cost) and just used standard x86[-64] systems in a cluster instead. SGI were also unable to compete in the grpahics workstation market where 2-4 way x86 systems with SLI/Crossfire NVidia Quatro or ATI FireGL cards now reign surpreme (Even 3DLabs amazing wildcat cards couldn't compete)

They dug the hole themselves.

There were attempts to make:
winblow workstation
x86 based severs

Someone here bought the second one, 2x1GHz PIV which had cpu fan assembled to blow air into the pipe connecting cpu and rear ventilation holes. The front case fan blew the air inside too. Apparently that caused it to be totally unstable. And linux on it sucked (drivers etc.).

And the pricing is something to see as well...

Reminds me C= that once produced PCs along with Amigas....


Another one bites the dust
Jack

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"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg

Quote:

Poster: jack Date: 9-May-2006 11:45:20 They dug the hole themselves. There were attempts to make: winblow workstation x86 based severs Someone here bought the second one, 2x1GHz PIV which had cpu fan assembled to blow air into the pipe connecting cpu and rear ventilation holes. The front case fan blew the air inside too. Apparently that caused it to be totally unstable. And linux on it sucked (drivers etc.). And the pricing is something to see as well... Reminds me C= that once produced PCs along with Amigas.... Another one bites the dust Jack

I agree.They drop their MIPS/IRIX based machines in favour of X86/linux and that is the consequence of this mistake.Much like commodore that put more effort in the PC that in the Amiga that was those that gave money and what were more advanced.
This is the ultimate probe that the x86 route is a disaster
Sorry but Sun and apple will end in the same situation sooner or later.Sun because they seems that has started to give less importance to they sparc systems and apple to go x86

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No PowerPC, No Fun
Make Amiga Great Again

I think that the problem with SGI is that they stopped being innovative a while ago. When cheap 3D graphics cards appeared for standard PCs, they didn't really know what to do.

Hans

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http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

SGI's MIPS based servers are.. let's call it, low in demand. Sure, they had impressive single-image machines, but most applications of today, most tasks, don't *need* single-image systems. Many tasks can be transformed into parallel computations, where a "cluster" of inexpensive machines does the job better. The few customers who actually need single-image systems will buy into the Altix line of computers.

The graphics part of their mission seriously collided with the basic idea behind the MIPS processor. Why use a weak processor, dissipating very little heat.. and then bolt on seriously advanced graphics unto that (well, for the time, advanced. Nowadays, they have only one thing left to compete with in that arena, and they do that using commodity hardware)?

The result was a machine that needed cooling, fans, giving off alot of noise.. not to mention quite expensive. Comparing Sun Microsystems and their pricings of about.. 3-5 years ago, with someone interested in SGI systems - their jaw would drop. Sun's quite expensive prices, would yield a "Oh, that's quite cheap!" from anyone that bought SGI equipment. Granted, most of their product lines were aimed at different markets..

Besides, if I'm not mistaken, it is only the US based SGI that has filed for chapter 11. The EU and EMEA based offices are going better with their Altix offerings.

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If I started a site about cow dung, and someone wanted to discuss dog poo, I wouldn't give a ####.

Have your SGI forever... Turn it into a fridge.
http://home.planet.nl/~mourits/koelkast/

Quote:

The result was a machine that needed cooling, fans, giving off alot of noise.. not to mention quite expensive. Comparing Sun Microsystems and their pricings of about.. 3-5 years ago, with someone interested in SGI systems - their jaw would drop. Sun's quite expensive prices, would yield a "Oh, that's quite cheap!" from anyone that bought SGI equipment. Granted, most of their product lines were aimed at different markets..

Maybe MS will invest in SGI.? Good waste of MS funds, methinks.

Sun, I just hope they can survive the next few years and make a comeback. Most of the shows I went to, the Sun name once stood out for power and "Quality"

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"The system no longer works " -- Young Anakin Skywalker

Quote:

There were attempts to make: winblow workstation

A MS Windows NT/2K X86 build with SGI specific HAL.

SGI has been eclipsed by Alienware/VoodooPC in game/graphic high performance boxes which supports the standard ACPI HAL. Also, SGI missed the laptop PC hype.

Quote:

Reminds me C= that once produced PCs along with Amigas

CBM make !@#$ X86 PCs...

SGI also invested heavily in Itanic (aka Itanium), while X64/AMD64/EMT64 blown the IA-64 from workstation/low end server market.

Last edited by Hammer on 12-May-2006 at 04:06 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 12-May-2006 at 04:01 AM.

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@digitaldisaster
Quote:

Even 3DLabs amazing wildcat cards couldn't compete

3DLab's Wildcat duplicated similar mistakes to NVIDIA's Geforce FX (NV3x) i.e. building a GPU based on VLIW techniques instead of SIMD/MIMD...

After the release of NV40, NVIDIA has disclosed that they have issues in writing JIT driver complier for NV3X architecture.

Hardware wise, Wildcat VP can compete with ATI/NV e.g. Wildcat VP family yield ~200 GFlops of programmable 32bit FP. The issue with 3Dlabs is writing JIT complier driver that can extract 200 Gflops theoretical performance from Wildcat VP GPU.

PS; ATI R580 yields ~375 Gflops programmable (shader resource) 32bit FP (GFlops may not be comparable).

Last edited by Hammer on 12-May-2006 at 04:52 AM.

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Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Hammer

.. And?

SGI never competed in those areas. Not once. They competed in excellence, in clarity. As they still do, with their Prism-line of graphics machines. The regular vendors, when it came to graphics, could not compete on the same terms that SGI did, or does. Granted, the office or home market was not what SGI was aiming for, and there perhaps others could beat them. However, SGI's strength was measurable quality. Quality that only a few (I know of only one other, and their price is significantly higher) could compete with.

I'm talking about graphics visualisation, meaning a wall of graphics, many graphics boards cooperating, and the line where one graphics board ends, and the other continues, there is no difference. 3D-cooperation, Which means the visual acuity is shifty slightly, and you need special glasses... once you wear them, the wall ahead of you suddenly becomes real. This is something that isn't needed in the home, or office arena. This is something only needed in some very specific areas.. research, to name one.

No amount of performance numbers will bring down SGI from their number one place. Not this day and age.

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If I started a site about cow dung, and someone wanted to discuss dog poo, I wouldn't give a ####.