Is the Game Finally up for SGI? 182
Rob writes to mention a Computer Business Review article looking at the bankruptcy of SGI, and whether the company is planning on a comeback. CEO Dennis McKenna is emphatic that the company isn't just looking for an exit strategy, but it's hard to see where they could go from here. From the article: "SGI has more challenges ahead, and I still find it hard to believe that after all of the chances it has had to run a profitable server and visualization business in the past it can miraculously do so now, selling lower-end boxes on even slimmer margins. But I'm hoping that the Chapter 11 has provided the necessary wake-up call for the company to get really lean really fast, because only from a more stable financial footing does it have any hope of fighting its way back onto new technology buyers' wish-lists."
Considering SGI's major market... (Score:4, Informative)
We used to use SGI for everything related to virtual worlds... and carried on doing so when they moved to NT. About 6 months later someone noticed that we could swap expensive SGI boxes for cheap white boxes and save a fortune, then migrate all the legacy code without much pain to RedHat... and that was the end of SGI for us.
I do have a very nice SGI Indigo foot rest however.
Re:Considering SGI's major market... (Score:4, Insightful)
When SGI announced their x86 based line of servers I can remember thinking the same thing, "why would I buy this $3,500 dollar PC from SGI for $6,000?" It seemed to me as if they had the same problem that Sun currently has, not being able to decide what business they're in.
Re:Considering SGI's major market... (Score:2)
No compelling products anymore. (Score:5, Insightful)
But most of the people still running IRIX are doing so because they have legacy applications that they need to use, which assumedly already runs on their existing hardware
SGI is rapidly running of of stuff to sell. What they do make looks really neat (gotta love purple), and I'd love to have one under my desk, but it's tough to come up with a business case for the premium it seems like they have to charge in order to stay afloat.
As much as I hate to say it, being someone who's drooled over SGI gear for years, I think they need to exit the hardware business. Or perhaps license the SGI hardware brand out to someone else, to use as their high-end workstation brand. Then pare the company back and concentrate on software for the very high-end visualization markets, and perhaps offer consulting services for people converting from IRIX to Linux.
It seems like they tried to play IRIX for far too long after the writing was on the wall, and the gamble with Itanium didn't help either. Running a single-vendor OS on what's rapidly becoming a single-vendor hardware platform isn't something that many people are going to be interested in.
Re:No compelling products anymore. (Score:3, Interesting)
They effectively did this when they shed MIPS and the high-end graphics division. They may be designing their own system boards, but that's barely a shadow of what they used to do. They need to face up to the fact that they've lost whatever competitive advantages they had (workstations running their own high-end graphics hardware) and they can't compete against HP in the itanium server market.
I think their only hope would be to partner with nVidia and try to
Re:No compelling products anymore. (Score:2)
If itanic is the answer, then it must have been a particularly stupid question. Both Intel's x86[-64] offerings and AMD's x86[-64] offerings beat itanic in TDP, floating point performance per watt, FP perf per dollar, etc etc.
SGI's best bet would be to get as far away from itanic as possible and work with Core 2 Duo or the AMD chips coming out towards the end of the
Re:No compelling products anymore. (Score:2)
SGI's audience isn't efficiency-minded. They don't care about performace per watt, they just want the maximum performace. I'm not an itanium fan, but they've posted some seriously impressive FP scores (1GHz I2 ~ 3X a 2.4GHz Xeon [ioncomputer.com]). Note that an SGI I2 box is the #4 entry in the Top 500 List [top500.org] the highest-ranking non-IBM box on the list.
Re:No compelling products anymore. (Score:2)
Re:No compelling products anymore. (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly... But I think they should stay the heck away from itanium. It's going nowhere in the long term, and like you say, HP has them beat in that market anyway.
SGI should continue going on with their servers an
Re:No compelling products anymore. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No compelling products anymore. (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, I still don't get it: what is the point of "enterprise" graphics cards (i.e. FireGL and QuadroFX), aside from decent Linux OpenGL drivers? Is there some reason you can't use a normal gaming card for stuff like Maya, etc.?
Re:No compelling products anymore. (Score:4, Informative)
If you go for something like a Wildcat card, the cards tend to focus on raw numbers of polygons more than on effects (although they've been improving in those aspects in recent years). A few years ago I worked in a department that did Computational Fluid Dynamics. The results came out as a mesh with lots of data points at each mesh point. We'd view the results in 3D by just adding shading to the models. The points would be given a color on a red to blue scale (think weather charts) with the graphics card interpolating the colors along the polygon surface. We compared a then high end Quadro card with a 2 year old Wildcat card. The Wildcat completely blew away the Quadro in performance.
Also of note, the graphics cards in the then 5 year old SGI workstations seemed to hold their own against the Quadro card. I don't remember which was faster, but they were close enough in performance that you didn't really notice a difference unless you were looking for it.
A' la Lenovo? (Score:2)
Would we have a real competitor to Sun for Opteron boxes?
Licensing the SGI mark (the chrome dealy and name) to Asus, so they can double up on niche X86-ish gear; Apple's outsourcing on one hand, and their own sturdy 'sgi' rendering boxes on the other side?
Would that put them in a bad place with Steve? (would sgi renderfarm boxen have any impact on Pixar/DreamWorks, et al?)
Would Asus (for example - being a high-quality OEM) be able to make it happen? Is
Re:A' la Lenovo? (Score:2)
Re:A' la Lenovo? (Score:2)
The 'Thinkpad' name sells Lenovo notebooks. The difference there is that Lenovo was already making Thinkpads, they just got more leverage.
If you tried to sell me a 'Lenovo' notebook, never having made the connection to IBM and fuzzy, Thinkpad-inspired feelings, I'd tell you no.
It's those warm fuzzies that get people buying. The solidity of the hardware keeps them from being disappointed.
Re:A' la Lenovo? (Score:2)
Among geeks, however, the thinkpad name doesn't sell shit. It's the thinkpad design, which Lenovo got along with the name, that does so. Lenovo doubtless got key personnel. However, I'll be extremely hesitant before purchasing a
Re:A' la Lenovo? (Score:3)
The only competing market space they shared was the hollywood production market, which has been taken over by Apple anyway. Apple doesn't need Opterons, Intel has been playing catch up and the new Xeon 5100s are Opteron-killers. 'Xserve' in general is nice hardware, but it's too pricey and offers little over other 1U rackmounts if you're not running a 100% mac environment. IRIX has been dead for years, SGI has been selling Linux boxes since 2001 or so.
The problem is SGI has nothi
Re:A' la Lenovo? (Score:2)
Re:Considering SGI's major market... (Score:2, Informative)
With a sales response like that, it is no wonder they are having trouble. I sincerely hope they find a way out of bankruptcy --they ha
Just one? (Score:2)
It's not worth their time - which is crap, but unfortunately, they're still doing business in the 80's.
Re: (Score:2)
short-sighted stupid sales method (Score:2)
SGI: "How much money do you have?"
Compare this with IBM:
Go to the web site.
Select a mainframe you like.
Note the price.
Note the message about 308-volt 3-phase power and an electrician.
Add a nice mainframe to your shopping cart.
Go to check-out.
Supply millions of dollars.
Wait for the truck to arrive.
Thus, SGI is dead. The days are numbered for Oracle and Polycom as well. Don't expect to stay in business if you are an ass. At the first opportunity, customers will flee.
Re:Considering SGI's major market... (Score:2)
SGI, those were the days. Its said to see them have so much trouble over the years.
Re:Considering SGI's major market... (Score:2)
Re:Considering SGI's major market... (Score:3, Funny)
Mine's an Octane. In the winter, if it gets cold in the office, I can turn it on and use it as a space heater.
SGI Video cards (Score:4, Interesting)
You would think that the SGI name has enough high end appeal that nVidia or ATI would want to market SGI branded video cards. SGI could certainly be had cheap.
Re:SGI Video cards (Score:3, Informative)
For some time now SGI have been using ATI cards to power their machines - even on the high end [com.com]. How much more prestiege there is to be gained, especially for nVidia who weren't picked, I don't know.
Re:SGI Video cards (Score:5, Insightful)
nVidia poached most of SGI's engineers when they went big, which I guess soured their previous relationship. I suspect the decision to switch to ATI was based on politics, the sort that drive SGI into the ground into the first place. Good riddance
Oh, pardon, that's sgi, not SGI. Ooh, lowercase, how trendy. That's the sort of thing they focus on over in Mountain View these days.
I'll miss SGI about as much as I'll miss HP if they ever go under. The real company died a long time ago, we just haven't whacked their shambling zombie corpse with a shovel enough times yet.
Re:SGI Video cards (Score:2)
Maybe [adult swim] isn't the best place for marketing ideas?
Re:SGI Video cards (Score:2)
The brand itself is still worth a good chunk-o-change I would think.
Re:SGI Video cards (Score:3, Interesting)
Introducing the ALL NEW and breathtaking SGI X9900, brought to you by ATI! Powered by the revolutionary MIPS, er ITANIUM MUSCLE, err sorry we meant MIPS with INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH UNIX or was that NT oh NO ACTUALLY UNIX POWER thats great for GRAPHICS POWER, LONG TERM VIABILITY, and going OUT OF BUSINESS REALLY SOON! Buy yours today!
Re:SGI Video cards (Score:2)
Re:SGI Video cards (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, another thing that people always liked about their systems was the design astet
Zombies (Score:4, Interesting)
the game was up when it moved to intel (Score:4, Insightful)
The expensive add on video card did little to add value compared to the hp/dells of the world.
We have some SGI (Irix) based software here we ported fairly easily to solaris.
Re:the game was up when it moved to intel-HDTV (Score:2)
obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
SGI employees went to NetApp (Score:2)
Network Appliance is in the same biz (Score:2)
Like the poster said, here's a nickel kid, buy yourself a rack full of cheap storage.
Re:Network Appliance is in the same biz (Score:2)
Re:SGI employees went to NetApp (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SGI employees went to NetApp (Score:2)
Should have seen the writing on the wall.... (Score:2)
No money in hardware? (Score:2)
Re:No money in hardware? (Score:3, Interesting)
application software is somewhat different; there's a more viable market there. but SGI's not known for any
Re:No money in hardware? (Score:2)
They can think of themselves as a hardware company, but they are a software company that happens to make hardware.
Re:No money in hardware? (Score:2)
The average person goes to Dell or Apple or whoever and orders A COMPUTER. They don't buy their hardware in one place and their software in another.
That even applies to applications. A few might get purchased off the shelf, but most people take what they get with their computers and go. So Apple is a computer company. So is Dell, but they've outsourced the software production.
Perhaps one reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps one reason... (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps one reason... (Score:2)
Altrix / SGI (Score:4, Interesting)
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060717/sfm024.html?.v
Mckenna=asshole to shareholders (Score:2, Interesting)
SGI cancelled their annual shareholder meeting in December.
They barely gave us a conference call in January.. McKenna wouldn't say anything.. And they've cancelled every call after that.
I sold my last shares long ago (except for one) and I hope they get sued into oblivion.
Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
And on a related note, here's something I wrote last year when they were delisted, which struck me as funny then, and still does:*
A few days after SGI was delisted [google.com], I stumbled across an old (1994) article about SGI [wired.com] while I was poking around in one of my favorite places, the Wired archive [wired.com]. The article has this
Re:Apple (Score:2)
Today's Apple is NeXT in disguise.. Kind of like how Joe Dirt's wig grew into his scalp..
Re: (Score:2)
Ahhh ... but their stuff Just Works (Score:5, Interesting)
Their hardware rocks. The software - though complex, on three racks using a common file system - works.
I never believed in Itaniums, but for our code (heavy vectorizable, large memory models) they fly.
In short, if SGI collapses, in our market the loss will be quite noticeable.
Re:Ahhh ... but their stuff Just Works (Score:2)
Not Siggraph. (Score:4, Insightful)
Doing something Different... (Score:4, Interesting)
SGI's systems were well designed, but the problem was computing power increased to the point where the price/performance benefit of their boxes got too small to warrant serious consideration. Power became plentiful and cheap, and SGI's clients were Unix nerds so they could make other solutions work if they presented more cost effective alternatives. Even if those solutions were less elegant, they resulted in a better profit yield. In a free market that's enough to make the decision.
It's like that Dilbert cartoon segmenting customers - Smart customers are never a good bet. Of course that's exaggeration, but Apple appeals to those who want their computer to Stay Out Of The Way. That market segment is much less sensitive to hardware technology change, which is why Apple has lasted so long. Apple's customers don't WANT to be "smart" about computers, so they select a system that doesn't demand that. SGI's customers were high end power users - they were and are smart about computers. So when the technology changed, their users followed the changes.
I would like to see some smaller companies again push the limites of what we think of as "standard" computer designs, but as SGI has learned there is no money in such work and fabrication costs are prohibitive. The Lisp machines died out years ago, even more thoroughly. Maybe MOSIS and co will let someone get creative again, but for now the market seems to have decided, and the decision is for cheap and disposable.
Re:Doing something Different... (Score:3, Informative)
However, I switched away from Linux PCs on the desktop, and so have many other Unix-centered scientists, and we now use Apple computers. True, most of us like for the computer to Stay Out Of The Way, but most of us still like to be
Re:Doing something Different... (Score:2)
[OT] Re:Doing something Different... (Score:2)
Re:Doing something Different... (Score:2)
You hit the nail on the head. The UI in OS X is simple by some "power" users standards but that is the point. It is no more complex than it needs to be in order to serve 99% of all users' needs. For anyone who wants
FSF should by OpenGL (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:FSF should by OpenGL (Score:2)
SGI's been doing a pretty good job of sitting on OpenGL without making any improvements for years. What makes you think Microsoft can do a better job of stifling innovation than SGI's been doing?
-Don
Re:FSF should by OpenGL (Score:2)
Graphics Silicon (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Graphics Silicon (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Graphics Silicon (Score:3, Informative)
Commodity PC hardware ain't gonna cut it.
http://www.s3graphics.com/en/index.jsp [s3graphics.com]
http://www.matrox.com/ [matrox.com]
http://www.tridentmicro.com/ [tridentmicro.com]
have died at the hands of
http://www.leadtek.com/ [leadtek.com] (foxconn)
http://www.nvidia.com/ [nvidia.com]
http://www.ati.com/ [ati.com]
SGI's fu is weak besides..
Re:Graphics Silicon (Score:2)
Re:Graphics Silicon (Score:2)
Selling graphics cards in an already saturated market won't be SGI's saving grace is all. They have nothing to offer over nVidia.
Trident and S3 *are* commodity PC hardware..
I guess I wasn't clear enough. I went for a 'Monster (TM)' for a reason, I guess..
Re:Graphics Silicon (Score:2)
Or, to flip it around, maybe SGI is positioned well to reboot into a "GPGPU" house. Overloading the OpenGL API for scalable supercomputing. It's hard to believe that SGI survived the last 5 years without anything going for it, given their once opportunity-r
Re:Graphics Silicon (Score:2)
Because the teams that used to build SGI's graphics iron are now mostly over at nVidia? SGI's midrange graphics folks (Odyssey project and related folks), the ones who could build new chip sets and drivers for graphics cards, were transferred to SGI in 1999, as part of the same turnaround effort that laid off the advanced graphics division engineers.
SGI's current 'visualization systems' use off the shelf gra
Re:Graphics Silicon (Score:3, Interesting)
Since then Nvidia has changed the world.
SGI could have been the ones to do it, but they didnt want to come down from their $100,000 price tags.
Nvidia is sitting pretty these days... SGI is dead.
Re:Graphics Silicon (Score:2)
The graphics coprocessor biz is very competitive and volatile. But it's based more on performance than marketing than is the mass workstation ("PC") market. That's why nVidia is now champ, but a relatively recent entrant. Next year a new king wearing a new crown could rule the roost. That could be SGI.
On Altix (Score:2)
Can someone discuss the attractiveness of Altixs and if they could make SGI a takeover target, or what.
Thanks.
Re:On Altix (Score:3, Interesting)
- _Quin
Re:On Altix (Score:2, Interesting)
From coolest name to dumbest trademark (Score:2, Insightful)
But as far as I was concerned they missed the boat in '95 or so. My company wanted to buy SGI systems for graphics work, but for any reasonable amount of money at the time, the systems were entirely underpowered compared even to cheap consumer PC's running Photoshop. We had a hug
SGI "open to selling OpenGL"..best buyer? (Score:3, Insightful)
i would think any one of the companies currently on the ARB should be the ones that get to bid. any one of those would be favorable. Nvidia would be a great steal. ATI is in bed with DirectX and MS so i dunno about them. can IBM handle it? Apple would also be a good steal. what do you think?
Re:SGI "open to selling OpenGL"..best buyer? (Score:2)
R&D (Score:2)
Sun is currently clawing onto the edge of the cliff by slapping together existing technologies in ways nobody else has been willing to do so far, but the only way I could envision SGI doing that would be to use Linux and create some huge MRAM or RAM disk based quad CPU quad GPU editing stations and then mark the
if I was microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
Failed to adapt. (Score:2)
Back in the old days of the late 80s and early 90s it was easy to make a system that was say twice as powerful and costs 3 times as much as someone else and they would sell it. Because the performance gains worked and TCO to save the company more then the cos
Better late than never (Score:5, Informative)
Gee, I had my Slashdot article on the SGI bankruptcy rejected back on May 8th when it actually happened. Two months later, the bankruptcy gets a mention on Slashdot.
SGI's main remaining business is real estate. They own many buildings in Mountain View, most of which they lease to Google. [sgi.com] Due to some bad decisions (like signing up for a 55-year land lease in 1995) SGI loses money on that deal. Then they tried a sale/leaseback deal with Goldman Sachs and dug themselves a bigger hole by locking in their rent at the top of the dot-com boom. A friend at Google says that SGI is a "great landlord", though.
SGI doesn't really have much left in the way of manufacturing facilities. The only thing left is Chippewa Falls, the old Cray facility. They had 1,858 employees left at the start of the bankruptcy. SGI had way too much legacy administrative overhead. They had 18 different corporate entities, from Cray to MIPS to Parallel to Alias/Wavefront, and 43 more marketing subsidiaries in various countries. Most of those organizations will disappear in the bankruptcy.
From the filing: In the last several years, SGI has faced a number of challenges, which, taken together, have had a negative impact on SGI's overall financial performance. In the late 1990's, SGI made a series of investments in strategies and technologies that yielded less than the expected results.
Er, right.
Realistically, what happened is that SGI was totally unable to cope with their high-margin business becoming a low-margin business. Few companies succeed at that transition, IBM being a notable exception. And even IBM finally bailed out of PCs.
SGI Patent porfolio? (Score:2)
sgiPod (Score:2)
Maybe SGI should make an accelerated sgiPOD that plays music faster than any other MP3 player on the market. Then you could listen to your whole music collection in a few minutes!
The only thing they still have of value is their wonderful 3D logo, designed by Scott Kim. Now THAT's worth something.
-Don
Former Glory (Score:2)
not really (Score:3, Insightful)
Chapter 11 does not equal a death sentence, it's often just a way of flipping the bird to the creditors - that's what most people don't realize.
Re:not really (Score:3, Informative)
Re:not really (Score:2)
Sorry (Score:2)
Sorry to do a SPAM post, but you guys have GOT to see this... How to fix a 1993 Geo Metro with Title Problems [youtube.com]
Re:not really (Score:2)
In salespersonspeak, that's called "preserving the brand name".
Re:not really (Score:2)
Re::-( cryx0r (Score:4, Insightful)
Re::-( cryx0r (Score:2)
Re::-( cryx0r (Score:2)
Re:they need(ed) an Ipod (Score:2)
But yes, SGI needs to make something innovative (and highly desired) in order to recover.
On the other hand, if they do fail, wouldn't it be ironic if Cray, Inc. [wikipedia.org] swept SGI's remains up?