SGI Hiring 5+ Linux Kernel Hackers

cybrthng writes "Well, according to some adds on linuxtoday and also via SGI's SGI Employment Opportunities Webpage You can search under technical/engineering jobs and sure enough they're looking for a few good men to develop linux for SGI :) " Nice to see them start to make a bigger play in the Linux arena. I'm hearing cool rumors from over there- let's hope they're better then the name change...

This is true, you have to read this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now my word isnt that powerful, but i decided to keep my mouth shut until i heard SGI advertising this, but this year at Comdex sping '99 me and some friends took a look at SGI's room. (wasnt on the main floor...probabl cause of all the expensive computers...but VA Reasearch had Quad Xeons servers out..hmmm). And we started talking to a heavyset man in sharp suit that really knew a lot about the SGI's. Well he was on his way out when we started talking to another sales rep about the O2's when he informed us that, the man we had talked to was a really Big Player in the SGI community, so we went back over to him, and had a little more to talk to him about, and my friend poped the question "Why dont you guys put Linux on your systems?" and my friends this is the good part he said "Keep that thought in mind" and he winked :)

Well my friends, sorry to hold this information out on you guys for so long, but i would of rather had the "I told you so" attitude rather than the "Opps im sorry for getting your hopes up".

radioflyr

PTC Should Maybe Check These Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers in the field of Electronic Design had a heck of a discussion about
Linux vs. Ms-WinNT in Integrated System Design magazine quite some time ago.
The editorial that started it all and the articles that followed are listed
below mostly in chronological order.

Editorial - April 1998 [isdmag.com]
Cover Story - July 1998 [isdmag.com]
Cover Story - August 1998 [isdmag.com]
Editorial - August 1998 [isdmag.com]
Linux vs. NT Public Forum [isdmag.com]

And this one in Electronic Engineering Times:

'Real' designers reject Windows NT [eet.com]

It seems that, overall, at least hardware engineers with a job to get done
prefer *nix over NT by far.

Re:Linux on what architecture?

[jandrese]

I doubt it. SGI already has Irix for MIPS, so there is no compelling reason for them to pay to port Linux to MIPS. Linux engineers will probabally be reimplementing a lot of the work SGI did for Irix to get it as as scalable as it is today in Linux. Hopefully they will also be porting xfs to IA86. Imagine if everyone in the world used the same winning filesystem.

Re:sgi & ptc

[gavinhall]

Posted by 2stroke:

Hmmm, if pro/e is going to be ported to linux then I'll have to convince SDRC for porting I-DEAS to linux. My new visual is waiting down the hall to replace my good old indy. I can't wait to start on the Visual but I am afraid NT will never be as good as IRIX, which hasn't crashed on me ever.

Dirk

sgi & ptc

[dcp]

hmm, these two are a driving force in the mechanical cad arena (ptc makes pro/engineer). ptc has a poll on their page about porting pro/e to linux. Sgi is hiring kernel hackers.

This could be the breakthrough on the desktop linux has been looking for. Stability of unix, applications of linux (yes, linux has more office apps than irix, and softwindows is horrid)

I currently use an octane and pro/e daily. If sgi would have went with standard memory instead of some goofball type, it would have looked very good for those visual workstations.

Linux, Sgi, and Pro/e that would be nice.

dave

This might not be what you think

[kma]

It seems likely that these new SGI hires would be doing i386, possibly IA64 work. I think it is highly unlikely that they'll be putting Linux on 128p O2000's, now or anytime in the future. SGI has spent years turning IRIX into a scalable, reliable, hard-real-time OS; IRIX's only peer on high-end hardware is Solaris. The price of making IRIX scale this well has been (as for Solaris) poorer uniprocessor performance, which is Linux's strength.

SGI (if they aren't crazy) isn't interested in spending another six years turning Linux into the operating system they already have; instead they want to use Linux's desktop strength to shore up a weak area for their OS.

Unless they make it all modules...

[squarooticus]

...it damn well better be, because of the GPL.
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS

I don't get it

[edgy]

Why learn a standard that is pushed by one company versus a standard that's been in use for a long time and is something that will stay around for a while? I.E. C/C++ versus VB.

Greed? All the money made by VB developers? Don't C/C++ coders make more? Oh yeah, I forgot. VB is supposed to be the easy way to make a buck in programming. Everyone is looking for the easy way out. I suppose if you're only interested in coding a quick and dirty Windows app, you'll use VB. But I don't think that's what programming is about.

Maybe it's just me. I care more about enjoying my job and making something that I can be proud of, than about the money. And I cringe every time I'm forced to think about VB.

Then again, I've coded in VB just because I'm going to school now and I will take any job I can get that can deal with my schedule. :-) So I should shut up. Practicality does come into play here too, I suppose.

Ben

If they're rolling it into the kernel it will..

[edgy]

I think someone mentioned that the job description mentioned putting this into the Open Source community.

Besides, if it's getting rolled into the kernel, it has to be free for use by others, doesn't it?

Re:sgi & ptc

[GleekOid]

As the current owner of a visual workstation, I'd like to point out the memory in them is not a 'goofball' type, it's standard ECC Buffered SDRAM. You can buy it from thechipmerchant.com and tons of web places (as we have).

Yes, Buffered ECC SDRAM is not what goes in most no-name PCs (std PC100 SDRAM is unbuffered), but it is what all DELL workstation-class machines, all IBM intellistations, etc. use.

Re:3Dfx fx?

[pqbon]

3dfx is a monopolistic company that will NOT Emprace open source. They wanted some developers for closed source drivers.

SGI is looking for people to make the opensource support for their system better. They are also donating a TON of their own technology to the Kernel and X projects including GL and its companian technology, SMP work, etc.

In short OpenSource people LIKE what SGI is trying to do. People don't like companies who release Binary only drivers like 3dfx.

On a personaly note OpenSource is why I run linux not Solaris 7 (now that it's free for non-comercial use) or *BSD.

SGI serious about Linux

[Thagg]

I've been talking to SGI engineers and marketing
people every week or so for the last several
months, and I am impressed that they are moving
strongly in the right direction. They've made
a considerable amount of progress on a volunteer
basis; to get their new VW (Intel) box running
Linux. Last I heard from them is that they were
going to hire a couple of engineers full time.

The way that I see it, is that SGI has a fairly
simple decision to make; are they interested in
all of their previous customers (like me) or not?
Current (and former) SGI users would prefer Linux
to NT; but it is true that the SGI userbase is
sadly small. Still, the growth of Linux, at
the apparent expense of NT, seems to have shown
management at SGI the light.

This announcement that they want to hire 5 people
is further news that they are even more aggressive
than I had thought. Great.

This, along with the funding of Precision Insight
to write a direct rendering infrastructure for
Linux, shows that SGI gets it. Note, too, that
Precision Insight has just hired Daryll Strauss
of Digital Domain (who did, in his spare time,
the full-screen OpenGL for Voodoo cards under
Linux) to further their work. They're looking
for more people, too...check out
http://www.precisioninsight.com

3Dfx fx?

[Abstract]

A few days ago some 3Dfx job opportunities were posted. Not everyone was thrilled about the fact 3Dfx wanted to employ some Linux developers. Will this discussion repeat, only with the name 3DFX replaced with SGI?

Oh please

[zzg]

Its an obvious reference to the movie with the same title, or if even that was taken from an old expression. (Im not an english native speaker so I wouldnt really know).

You dont slam armstrong for saying "a giant leap for MANkind" do you?

But then again, I cant really say that I know what its like to be a woman in this industry. It might be like one of those thins you smile smugly about the first time but really gets on your nerves the twentieth time.

Re:Hmm..

[_Stryker]

C++ would not help you much for these positions. Plus you would need a strong background in operating system development and experience with multiprocessors.
---

Re:3Dfx fx?

[_Stryker]

The difference here is that all the work that SGI does to the kernel has to be made available to the rest of the linux community. 3Dfx wanted help making drivers which they could release as binary only if they wanted to. So the situations are not the same. If you read the job description you will see that the position "includes presentation and promotion of the solutions to be accepted in the open community where necessary."
---

Welcome to the next level

[Straker Skunk]

Awesome! Looks like these will be the ones who'll be rolling all those IRIX goodies SGI promised into the kernel! Just imagine: better scalability, cc:NUMA, a better MIPS codebase, etc. etc. *ooh! warm fuzzies*

This ranks second in coolness only to the development of a REAL libGL.so for Linux }:-)

Re:Hmm..

[Darth Maul]

Yeah, you will probably not be writing fluffy
code that you're used to in VB; I
think they need serious
kernel hackers to address sgi-specific hardware
stuff and OpenGL integration (hopefully).
I doubt they'd go for Linux on MIPS; why throw
away all that IRIX devel? I'm sure this is
for their VPC line. Probably want to get some
driver support into the Linux kernel for the
sgi cobalt video chipset and take advantage of
the UMA.

there are 7 Linux jobs posted

[bofh23]

I found a total of 7 Linux jobs posted on the SGI - Opportunities [sgi.com] page, 6 in engineering and 1 in marketing.

req # | date posted| title
------+------------+---------------------------- --------
35470 | 03/19/1999 | Linux Kernel Development Eng
35726 | 03/05/1999 | Linux Kernel Dev Engineer
35727 | 03/05/1999 | Linux Kernel Dev Engineer
35730 | 03/05/1999 | Linux Kernel Dev Engineer
35731 | 03/05/1999 | Linux Kernel Dev Engineer
35742 | 03/05/1999 | Systems Eng-Linux OS Dev
36186 | 04/30/1999 | Dekstop [sic] Linux Product Manager
------+------------+---------------------------- --------

Here's an excerpt of the Responsibilities section of the marketing job (36186):

Knowledge of software development, scientific research, EDA/ECAD a plus.

you do the math!

Re:"a few good MEN"?

[BethBear]

There are no references to gender on the kernel jobs that came up from their search. Maybe twas the messenger.

Beth

Re:Hmm..

[Breace]

We have an in-house OS (maybe one day I'll talk them into Open Sourcing it...) that's written almost entirely in C++.
Works just fine. Performance absolutely great (we get full duplex 95Mb/s (in each direction) on the Ethernet while playing back an MPEG movie from harddisk on a K5-133)

The point is that the Linux kernel is not C++.
I think it used to be compiled with the gpp compiler for a while but due to bugs in the compiler they switched back to gcc.

Breace.

"a few good MEN"?

[roca]

I hope they'd consider female applicants too.

It's true that there may not be many female kernel hackers to go around, but it's insidious inadvertant slips like this that contribute to the situation, and that's bad for all of us.

Re:SGI serious about Linux

[Carlos Rego]

I must say, I use NT ONLY because of Softimage and Lightwave, if SGI brings Softimage to Linux ... it's bye bye Microsoft for me, .... I can only dream :)

Re:SGI serious about Linux

[Carlos Rego]

sometimes I embarrace myself, what I meant to say was, if SGI brings MAYA to Linux ... I'll be a happy man :)

Linux Employment

[iceygambler]

very interesting.In tomorrow land or turmoil city?

Linux on what architecture?

[kebe]

It really doesn't say if they are going to work on MIPS or the new Intel-boxes. Does anybody know if this is a sign that SGI officially will put Linux on MIPS? (I hope so)

SGI Releasing XFS open-source ?

[ctrl]

I've just had a talk with a SGI rep here (we have an Origin200) and he said SGI is preparing an open-source release of XFS (like they did with GLX).It might be a few months away though...
XFS is the journaling filesystem used by IRIX. IRIX with XFS has some unique features like "guaranteed rate I/O". I wonder if they'll port this to Linux.
If you don't know what XFS is good for, recovering an 18 Gb XFS filesystem after power failure takes a few seconds ! No more waiting for fsck... Less downtime...