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Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American
high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into a mult ...
manufacturer, producing
computer hardware Computer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the case, central processing unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM), monitor, mouse, keyboard, computer data storage, graphics card, sound card, speakers and motherboard. ...
and
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...
. Founded in
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is t ...
in November 1981 by
Jim Clark James Clark Jr. OBE (4 March 1936 – 7 April 1968) was a British Formula One racing driver from Scotland, who won two World Championships, in 1963 and 1965. A versatile driver, he competed in sports cars, touring cars and in the Indianap ...
, its initial market was
3D graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...
computer workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workst ...
s, but its products, strategies and market positions developed significantly over time. Early systems were based on the
Geometry Engine Geometric manipulation of modelling primitives, such as that performed by a geometry pipeline, is the first stage in computer graphics systems which perform image generation based on geometric models. While geometry pipelines were originally imple ...
that Clark and Marc Hannah had developed at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
, and were derived from Clark's broader background in
computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...
. The Geometry Engine was the first
very-large-scale integration Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...
(VLSI) implementation of a
geometry pipeline Geometric manipulation of modelling primitives, such as that performed by a geometry pipeline, is the first stage in computer graphics systems which perform image generation based on geometric models. While geometry pipelines were originally implem ...
, specialized hardware that accelerated the "inner-loop" geometric computations needed to display three-dimensional images. For much of its history, the company focused on 3D imaging and was a major supplier of both hardware and software in this market. Silicon Graphics reincorporated as a
Delaware corporation The Delaware General Corporation Law (Title 8, Chapter 1 of the Delaware Code) is the statute of the Delaware Code that governs corporate law in the U.S. state of Delaware. Adopted in 1899, the statute has since seen Delaware become the most im ...
in January 1990. Through the mid to late-1990s, the rapidly improving performance of commodity
Wintel Wintel (portmanteau of Windows and Intel) is the partnership of Microsoft Windows and Intel producing personal computers using Intel x86-compatible processors running Microsoft Windows. Background By the early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibi ...
machines began to erode SGI's stronghold in the 3D market. The porting of
Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popul ...
to other platforms was a major event in this process. SGI made several attempts to address this, including a disastrous move from their existing MIPS platforms to the
Intel Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance comput ...
, as well as introducing their own
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
-based
Intel IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called i386) is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarnation of x ...
based workstations and servers that failed in the market. In the mid-2000s the company repositioned itself as a
supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...
vendor, a move that also failed. On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for
Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...
bankruptcy protection and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to Rackable Systems, a deal finalized on May 11, 2009, with Rackable assuming the name
Silicon Graphics International Silicon Graphics International Corp. (SGI; formerly Rackable Systems, Inc.) was an American manufacturer of computer hardware and software, including high-performance computing systems, x86-based servers for datacenter deployment, and visualiz ...
. The remains of Silicon Graphics, Inc. became Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc.


History


Early years

James H. Clark James Henry Clark (born March 23, 1944) is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon. His research work in comput ...
left his position as an electrical engineering associate professor at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
to found SGI in 1982 along with a group of seven graduate students and research staff from Stanford University: Kurt Akeley, David J. Brown, Tom Davis, Rocky Rhodes, Marc Hannah, Herb Kuta, and
Mark Grossman Marc Isaiah Grossman (born September 23, 1951) is an American former diplomat and government official. He served as United States Ambassador to Turkey, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, and Under Secretary of State for Political ...
; along with
Abbey Silverstone Abbey Silverstone is an early executive in the computer industry. He co-founded Silicon Graphics (SGI) with Jim Clark, and its first Vice President of Operations. Silverstone has a BS in Industrial Administration from the University of Illinois w ...
and a few others.


Growth

Ed McCracken was
CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
of Silicon Graphics from 1984 to 1997. During those years, SGI grew from annual revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion.


Decline

The addition of 3D graphic capabilities to PCs, and the ability of clusters of
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
- and BSD-based PCs to take on many of the tasks of larger SGI servers, ate into SGI's core markets. The porting of
Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popul ...
to
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
,
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
and
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
further eroded the low end of SGI's product line. In response to challenges faced in the marketplace and a falling share price
Ed McCracken Ed McCracken was CEO of Silicon Graphics (SGI) from 1984 to 1997. Under his leadership, SGI grew from annual revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion. Prior to leading Silicon Graphics, he spent 16 years as an executive with Hewlett-Packard. McC ...
was fired and SGI brought in
Richard Belluzzo Richard "Rick" Belluzzo (born November 26, 1953) is an American businessman who worked as an executive at Hewlett-Packard (HP), Silicon Graphics (SGI), Microsoft (MS), Quantum Corp. (QTM), and Viavi Solutions (VIAV). He has served on the board ...
to replace him. Under Belluzzo's leadership a number of initiatives were taken which are considered to have accelerated the corporate decline. One such initiative was trying to sell workstations running Windows NT called Visual Workstations in addition to workstations running
IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system a ...
, the company's version of UNIX. This put the company in even more direct competition with the likes of Dell, making it more difficult to justify a price premium. The product line was unsuccessful and abandoned a few years later. SGI's premature announcement of its migration from MIPS to Itanium and its abortive ventures into IA-32 architecture systems (the Visual Workstation line, the ex-Intergraph Zx10 range and the SGI 1000-series Linux servers) damaged SGI's credibility in the market. In 1999, in an attempt to clarify their current market position as more than a graphics company, Silicon Graphics Inc. changed its corporate identity to "SGI", although its legal name was unchanged. At the same time, SGI announced a new logo consisting of only the letters "sgi" in a proprietary font called "SGI", created by branding and design consulting firm
Landor Associates Landor is a brand consulting firm founded in 1941 by Walter Landor, who pioneered some research, design, and consulting methods that the branding industry still uses. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company maintains 26 offices in 20 countr ...
, in collaboration with designer Joe Stitzlein. SGI continued to use the "Silicon Graphics" name for its workstation product line, and later re-adopted the cube logo for some workstation models. In November 2005, SGI announced that it had been delisted from the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its liste ...
because its common stock had fallen below the minimum share price for listing on the exchange. SGI's
market capitalization Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders. Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by ...
dwindled from a peak of over seven
billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: *1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English. * 1,000,000,000,000, i. ...
dollars in 1995 to just $120 million at the time of delisting. In February 2006, SGI noted that it could run out of cash by the end of the year.


Re-emergence

In mid-2005, SGI hired Alix Partners to advise it on returning to profitability and received a new line of credit. SGI announced it was postponing its scheduled annual December stockholders meeting until March 2006. It proposed a
reverse stock split In finance, a reverse stock split or reverse split is a process by which shares of corporate stock are effectively merged to form a smaller number of proportionally more valuable shares. A reverse stock split is also called a stock merge. The "r ...
to deal with the de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange. In January 2006, SGI hired Dennis McKenna as its new CEO and chairman of the board of directors. Mr. McKenna succeeded Robert Bishop, who remained vice chairman of the board of directors. On May 8, 2006, SGI announced that it had filed for
Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...
bankruptcy protection for itself and U.S. subsidiaries as part of a plan to reduce debt by $250 million. Two days later, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved its first day
motions In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and me ...
and its use of a $70 million financing facility provided by a group of its bondholders. Foreign subsidiaries were unaffected. On September 6, 2006, SGI announced the end of development for the MIPS/IRIX line and the IRIX operating system. Production would end on December 29 and the last orders would be fulfilled by March 2007. Support for these products would end after December 2013. SGI emerged from bankruptcy protection on October 17, 2006. Its stock symbol at that point, ''SGID.pk'', was canceled, and new stock was issued on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ''SGIC''. This new stock was distributed to the company's creditors, and the SGID common stockholders were left with worthless shares. At the end of that year, the company moved its headquarters from Mountain View to
Sunnyvale Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the nort ...
. Its earlier North Shoreline headquarters is now occupied by the
Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact o ...
; the newer Amphitheatre Parkway headquarters was sold to
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
(which had already subleased and moved into the facility in 2003). Both of these locations were award-winning designs by Studios Architecture. In April 2008, SGI re-entered the visualization market with the SGI Virtu range of visualization servers and workstations, which were re-badged systems from BOXX Technologies based on Intel
Xeon Xeon ( ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded system markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same ar ...
or
AMD Opteron Opteron is AMD's x86 former server and workstation processor line, and was the first processor which supported the AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as x86-64 or AMD64). It was released on April 22, 2003, with the ''Sledge ...
processors and
Nvidia Quadro Quadro was Nvidia's brand for graphics cards intended for use in workstations running professional computer-aided design (CAD), computer-generated imagery (CGI), digital content creation (DCC) applications, scientific calculations and machine l ...
graphics chipsets, running
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop ...
,
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SUSE Linux Enterprise (often abbreviated to SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop com ...
or
Windows Compute Cluster Server Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...
.


Final bankruptcy and acquisition by Rackable Systems

In December 2008, SGI received a delisting notification from
NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
, as its market value had been below the minimum $35 million requirement for 10 consecutive trading days, and also did not meet NASDAQ's alternative requirements of a minimum stockholders' equity of $2.5 million or annual net income from continuing operations of $500,000 or more. On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 11 again, and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to
Rackable Systems Silicon Graphics International Corp. (SGI; formerly Rackable Systems, Inc.) was an American manufacturer of computer hardware and software, including high-performance computing systems, x86-based servers for datacenter deployment, and visualiza ...
for $25 million. The sale, ultimately for $42.5 million, was finalized on May 11, 2009; at the same time, Rackable announced their adoption of "Silicon Graphics International" as their global name and brand. The Bankruptcy Court scheduled continuing proceedings and hearings for June 3 and 24, 2009, and July 22, 2009. (selected items from the court docket, Case # 09-11701, United States Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, Judge Martin Glenn) After the Rackable acquisition, ''Vizworld'' magazine publishe
a series of six articles that chronicle the downfall of SGI.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas, United States. HPE was founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, as part of the splitting of the ...
acquired Silicon Graphics International in November 2016, which allowed HPE to place the SGI
Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance ...
, a
TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non- distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these updates always coinci ...
supercomputer at NASA Ames Research Center, in its portfolio.


Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc. era

During Silicon Graphics Inc.'s second bankruptcy phase, it was renamed to Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc.(GPHI) in June 2009. In 2010, GPHI announced it had won a significant favorable ruling in its litigation with ATI Technologies and AMD in June 2010, following the patent lawsuit originally filed during the Silicon Graphics, Inc. era. Following the 2008 appeal by ATI over the validity of ('327) and Silicon Graphics Inc's voluntary dismissal of the ('376) patent from the lawsuit, the Federal Circuit upheld the jury verdict on the validity of GPHI's U.S. Patent No. 6,650,327, and furthermore found that AMD had lost its right to challenge patent validity in future proceedings. On January 31, 2011, the District Court entered an order that permits AMD to pursue its invalidity affirmative defense at trial and does not permit SGI to accuse AMD's Radeon R700 series of graphics products of infringement in this case. On April 18, 2011, GPHI and AMD had entered into a confidential Settlement and License Agreement that resolved this litigation matter for an immaterial amount and that provides immunity under all GPHI patents for alleged infringement by AMD products, including components, software and designs. On April 26, 2011, the Court entered an order granting the parties' agreed motion for dismissal and final judgment. In November 2011, GPHI filed another patent infringement lawsuit against Apple Inc. in Delaware involving more patents than their original patent infringement case against Apple last November, for alleged violation of U.S. patents 6,650,327 ('327), ('145) and ('881). In 2012, GPHI filed lawsuit against Apple, Sony, HTC Corp, LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Research in Motion Ltd. for allegedly violating patent relating to a computer graphics process that turns text and images into pixels to be displayed on screens. Affected devices include Apple iPhone, HTC EVO4G, LG Thrill, Research in Motion Torch, Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, and Sony Xperia Play smartphones. * - 1998 Display system having floating point rasterization and floating point .. * - 2002 System, method, and computer program product for near-real time load .. * - 1998 Large area wide aspect ratio flat panel monitor having high resolution for .. * - 1995 Data processing system for processing one and two parcel instructions


Technology


Motorola 680x0-based systems

SGI's first generation products, starting with the
IRIS Iris most often refers to: *Iris (anatomy), part of the eye *Iris (mythology), a Greek goddess * ''Iris'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants * Iris (color), an ambiguous color term Iris or IRIS may also refer to: Arts and media Fictional ent ...
(Integrated Raster Imaging System) 1000 series of high-performance graphics terminals, were based on the
Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...
family of
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...
s. The later IRIS 2000 and 3000 models developed into full
UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workst ...
s.


IRIS 1000 series

The first entries in the 1000 series (models 1000 and 1200, introduced in 1984) were graphics terminals, peripherals to be connected to a general-purpose computer such as a
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
VAX, to provide graphical raster display abilities. They used 8 MHz Motorola 68000 CPUs with of RAM and had no
disk drive Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...
s. They booted over the network (via an Excelan EXOS/101 Ethernet card) from their controlling computer. They used the "PM1" CPU board, which was a variant of the board that was used in
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
's
SUN workstation The SUN workstation was a modular computer system designed at Stanford University in the early 1980s. It became the seed technology for many commercial products, including the original workstations from Sun Microsystems. History In 1979 Xerox do ...
and later in the
Sun-1 Sun-1 was the first generation of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in May 1982. These were based on a CPU board designed by Andy Bechtolsheim while he was a graduate student at Stanford University and f ...
workstation from
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...
. The graphics system was composed of the GF1
frame buffer A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Mode ...
, the UC3 "Update Controller", DC3 "Display Controller", and the BP2 bitplane. The 1000-series machines were designed around the
Multibus Multibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus. The Multibus specification was important because it was a robust, well-thought out industry standard with ...
standard. Later 1000-series machines, the 1400 and 1500, ran at 10 MHz and had 1.5 MB of RAM. The 1400 had a 73 MB
ST-506 The ST-506 and ST-412 (sometimes written ST506 and ST412) were early hard disk drive products introduced by Seagate in 1980 and 1981 respectively, that later became construed as hard disk drive interfaces: the ST-506 disk interface and the ST-41 ...
disk drive, while the 1500 had a 474 MB SMD-based disk drive with a Xylogics 450 disk controller. They may have used the PM2 CPU and PM2M1 RAM board from the 2000 series. The usual monitor for the 1000 series ran at 30 Hz
interlaced Interlaced video (also known as interlaced scan) is a technique for doubling the perceived frame rate of a video display without consuming extra bandwidth. The interlaced signal contains two fields of a video frame captured consecutively. This ...
. Six beta-test units of the 1400 workstation were produced, and the first production unit (SGI's first commercial computer) was shipped to Carnegie-Mellon University's Electronic Imaging Laboratory in 1984.


IRIS 2000 and 3000 series

SGI rapidly developed its machines into workstations with its second product line — the IRIS 2000 series, first released in August 1985. SGI began using the
UNIX System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
. There were five models in two product ranges, the 2000/2200/2300/2400/2500 range which used 68010 CPUs (the PM2 CPU module), and the later "Turbo" systems, the 2300T, 2400T and 2500T, which had 68020s (the IP2 CPU module). All used the Excelan EXOS/201 Ethernet card, the same graphics hardware (GF2 Frame Buffer, UC4 Update Controller, DC4 Display Controller, BP3 Bitplane). Their main differences were the CPU, RAM, and
Weitek Weitek Corporation was an American chip-design company that originally focused on floating-point units for a number of commercial CPU designs. During the early to mid-1980s, Weitek designs could be found powering a number of high-end designs a ...
Floating Point Accelerator Floating may refer to: * a type of dental work performed on horse teeth * use of an isolation tank * the guitar-playing technique where chords are sustained rather than scratched * ''Floating'' (play), by Hugh Hughes * Floating (psychological ph ...
boards, disk controllers and disk drives (both
ST-506 The ST-506 and ST-412 (sometimes written ST506 and ST412) were early hard disk drive products introduced by Seagate in 1980 and 1981 respectively, that later became construed as hard disk drive interfaces: the ST-506 disk interface and the ST-41 ...
and SMD were available). These could be upgraded, for example from a 2400 to a 2400T. The 2500 and 2500T had a larger chassis, a standard 6' 19" EIA rack with space at the bottom for two SMD disk drives weighing approximately each. The non-Turbo models used the
Multibus Multibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus. The Multibus specification was important because it was a robust, well-thought out industry standard with ...
for the CPU to communicate with the floating point accelerator, while the Turbos added a ribbon cable dedicated for this. 60 Hz monitors were used for the 2000 series. The height of the machines using Motorola CPUs was reached with the IRIS 3000 series (models 3010/3020/3030 and 3110/3115/3120/3130, the 30s both being full-size rack machines). They used the same graphics subsystem and Ethernet as the 2000s, but could also use up to 12 "geometry engines", the first widespread use of hardware graphics accelerators. The standard monitor was a 19" 60 Hz non-interlaced unit with a tilt/swivel base; 19" 30 Hz interlaced and a 15" 60 Hz non-interlaced (with tilt/swivel base) were also available. The IRIS 3130 and its smaller siblings were impressive for the time, being complete
UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
workstations. The 3130 was powerful enough to support a complete 3D animation and rendering package without mainframe support. With large capacity hard drives by standards of the day (two 300 MB drives), streaming tape and Ethernet, it could be the centerpiece of an animation operation. The line was formally discontinued in November 1989, with about 3500 systems shipped of all 2000 and 3000 models combined.


RISC era

With the introduction of the IRIS 4D series, SGI switched to MIPS microprocessors. These machines were more powerful and came with powerful on-board floating-point capability. As 3D graphics became more popular in television and film during this time, these systems were responsible for establishing much of SGI's reputation. SGI produced a broad range of MIPS-based workstations and servers during the 1990s, running SGI's version of UNIX System V, now called
IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system a ...
. These included the massive Onyx visualization systems, the size of refrigerators and capable of supporting up to 64 processors while managing up to three streams of high resolution, fully realized 3D graphics. In October 1991, MIPS announced the first commercially available
64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A ...
microprocessor, the
R4000 The R4000 is a microprocessor developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implements the MIPS III instruction set architecture (ISA). Officially announced on 1 October 1991, it was one of the first 64-bit microprocessors and the first MIPS III implem ...
. SGI used the R4000 in its
Crimson Crimson is a rich, deep red color, inclining to purple. It originally meant the color of the kermes dye produced from a scale insect, '' Kermes vermilio'', but the name is now sometimes also used as a generic term for slightly bluish-red co ...
workstation. IRIX 6.2 was the first fully 64-bit IRIX release, including 64-bit pointers. To secure the supply of future generations of MIPS microprocessors (the 64-bit
R4000 The R4000 is a microprocessor developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implements the MIPS III instruction set architecture (ISA). Officially announced on 1 October 1991, it was one of the first 64-bit microprocessors and the first MIPS III implem ...
), SGI acquired the company in 1992 for $333 millionComputer History Museum.
Silicon Graphics Professional IRIS 4D/50GT
" Retrieved September 19, 2011.
and renamed it as MIPS Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI. In 1993, Silicon Graphics (SGI) signed a deal with
Nintendo is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade playing cards ...
to develop the Reality Coprocessor (RCP)
GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
used in the
Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and ...
(N64) video game console. The deal was signed in early 1993, and it was later made public in August of that year. The console itself was later released in 1996. The RCP was developed by SGI's Nintendo Operations department, led by engineer Dr. Wei Yen. In 1997, twenty SGI employees, led by Yen, left SGI and founded
ArtX ArtX was a company formed in 1997 by a group of twenty former Silicon Graphics, Inc. engineers, who had worked on the Nintendo 64's graphics chip. The company was focused on delivering a PC graphics chip that was both high performance and cost ef ...
(later acquired by
ATI Technologies ATI Technologies Inc. (commonly called ATI) was a Canadian semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technology Inc., ...
in 2000). In 1998, SGI relinquished some ownership of MIPS Technologies, Inc in a Re-IPO, and fully divested itself in 2000. In the late 1990s, when much of the industry expected the
Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance comput ...
to replace both CISC and
RISC In computer engineering, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set comp ...
architectures in non-embedded computers, SGI announced their intent to phase out MIPS in their systems. Development of new MIPS microprocessors stopped, and the existing R12000 design was extended multiple times until 2003 to provide existing customers more time to migrate to Itanium. In August 2006, SGI announced the end of production for MIPS/IRIX systems, and by the end of the year MIPS/IRIX products were no longer generally available from SGI.


IRIS GL and OpenGL

Until the second generation Onyx Reality Engine machines, SGI offered access to its high performance 3D graphics subsystems through a proprietary API known as ''IRIS Graphics Language'' (
IRIS GL IRIS GL (Integrated Raster Imaging System Graphics Library) is a proprietary graphics API created by Silicon Graphics (SGI) in the early 1980s for producing 2D and 3D computer graphics on their IRIX-based IRIS graphical workstations. Later SGI re ...
). As more features were added over the years, IRIS GL became harder to maintain and more cumbersome to use. In 1992, SGI decided to clean up and reform IRIS GL and made the bold move of allowing the resulting
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...
API to be cheaply licensed by SGI's competitors, and set up an industry-wide consortium to maintain the OpenGL standard (the OpenGL Architecture Review Board). This meant that for the first time, fast, efficient, cross-platform graphics programs could be written. For over 20 years – until the introduction of the
Vulkan API Vulkan is a low- overhead, cross-platform API, open standard for 3D graphics and computing. Vulkan targets high-performance real-time 3D graphics applications, such as video games and interactive media. Vulkan is intended to offer higher perfo ...
– OpenGL remained the only real-time 3D graphics standard to be portable across a variety of operating systems.


ACE Consortium

SGI was part of the Advanced Computing Environment initiative, formed in the early 1990s with 20 other companies, including
Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
,
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
,
MIPS Computer Systems MIPS Technologies, Inc., formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides pro ...
,
Groupe Bull Bull SAS (also known as Groupe Bull, Bull Information Systems, or simply Bull) is a French computer company headquartered in Les Clayes-sous-Bois, in the western suburbs of Paris. The company has also been known at various times as Bull General E ...
,
Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', ''E ...
,
NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...
, NeTpower,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
and
Santa Cruz Operation The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (usually known as SCO, pronounced either as individual letters or as a word) was an American software company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that was best known for selling three Unix operating system variants ...
. Its intent was to introduce workstations based on the
MIPS architecture MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...
and able to run
Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...
and
SCO UNIX Xinuos OpenServer, previously SCO UNIX and SCO Open Desktop (SCO ODT), is a closed source computer operating system developed by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), later acquired by SCO Group, and now owned by Xinuos. Early versions of OpenServer were ...
. The group produced the
Advanced RISC Computing Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) is a specification promulgated by a defunct consortium of computer manufacturers (the Advanced Computing Environment project), setting forth a standard MIPS RISC-based computer hardware and firmware environment. T ...
(ARC) specification, but began to unravel little more than a year after its formation.


Entertainment industry

For eight consecutive years (1995–2002), all films nominated for an Academy Award for Distinguished Achievement in Visual Effects were created on Silicon Graphics computer systems. the technology was also used in commercials for a host of companies. An SGI Crimson system with the fsn
three-dimensional Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called '' parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the inform ...
file system navigator appeared in the 1993 movie ''
Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later also referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton and centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. It began in 1990 when ...
''. In the movie ''
Twister Twister may refer to: Weather * Tornado Aviation * Pipistrel Twister, a Slovenian ultralight trike * Silence Twister, a German homebuilt aircraft design * Wings of Change Twister, an Austrian paraglider design Entertainment * ''Twister'' (198 ...
'', protagonists can be seen using an SGI laptop computer; however, the unit shown was not an actual working computer, but rather a fake laptop shell built around an SGI Corona LCD flat screen display. The 1995 film '' Congo'' also features an SGI laptop computer being used by Dr. Ross (
Laura Linney Laura Leggett Linney (born February 5, 1964) is an American actress. Having studied acting at Juilliard School (1986-1990), she became known for her complex and multilayered performances on stage and screen. She has received various accolades, ...
) to communicate via satellite to TraviCom HQ. The purple, lowercased "sgi" logo can be seen at the beginning of the opening credits of the
HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
series ''Silicon Valley'', before being taken down and replaced by the
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
logo as the intro graphics progress. Google leased the former SGI buildings in 2003 for their headquarters in Mountain View, CA until they purchased the buildings outright in 2006. Once inexpensive PCs began to have graphics performance close to the more expensive specialized graphical workstations which were SGI's core business, SGI shifted its focus to high performance servers for
digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...
and the Web. Many SGI graphics engineers left to work at other computer graphics companies such as
ATI Ati or ATI may refer to: * Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines **Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group ** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines *Ati language (China), a ...
and
Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
, contributing to the PC 3D graphics revolution.


Free software

SGI was a promoter of
free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...
, supporting several projects such as
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
and
Samba Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Havin ...
, and opening some of its own previously proprietary code such as the
XFS XFS is a high-performance 64-bit journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics, Inc (SGI) in 1993. It was the default file system in SGI's IRIX operating system starting with its version 5.3. XFS was ported to the Linux kernel in 2001; as ...
filesystem and the
Open64 Open64 is a free, open-source, optimizing compiler for the Itanium and x86-64 microprocessor architectures. It derives from the SGI compilers for the MIPS R10000 processor, called ''MIPSPro''. It was initially released in 2000 as GNU GPL softwar ...
compiler. SGI was also important in its contribution to the C++
Standard Template Library The Standard Template Library (STL) is a Library (computer science), software library originally designed by Alexander Stepanov for the C++ programming language that influenced many parts of the C++ Standard Library. It provides four components ...
(STL) with many useful extensions in the MIT-like licensed SGI STL implementation. The extension keeps being carried by the direct descendant STLport and GNU's libstdc++.


Acquisition of Alias, Wavefront, Cray and Intergraph

In 1995, SGI purchased Alias Research,
Kroyer Films Kroyer Films, Inc. was a pioneering animation studio formed in 1986 by animator Bill Kroyer and his wife Susan Kroyer and is one of the earliest studios to combine computer and hand-drawn animation. Productions Kroyer Films produced the Oscar-n ...
, and
Wavefront Technologies Wavefront Technologies was a computer graphics company that developed and sold animation software used in Hollywood motion pictures and other industries. It was founded in 1984, in Santa Barbara, California, by Bill Kovacs, Larry Barels, Mark Syl ...
in a deal totaling approximately $500 million and merged the companies into Alias, Wavefront. In June 2004 SGI sold the business, later renamed to
Alias/Wavefront Alias Systems Corporation (formerly Alias Research, Alias Wavefront), headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was a software company that produced high-end 3D computer graphics, 3D graphics software. Alias was eventually bought by Autodesk. H ...
, to the private equity investment firm
Accel-KKR Accel-KKR is an American technology-focused private equity firm with over $14 billion in total assets under management. The firm invests primarily in middle-market software and technology-enabled services businesses, providing capital for buyo ...
for $57.1 million. In October 2005,
Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered ...
announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Alias for $182 million in cash. In February 1996, SGI purchased the well-known
supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...
manufacturer
Cray Research Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...
for $740 million, and began to use marketing names such as "CrayLink" for (SGI-developed) technology integrated into the SGI server line. Three months later, it sold the
Cray Business Systems Division Floating Point Systems, Inc. (FPS), was a Beaverton, Oregon vendor of attached array processors and minisupercomputers. The company was founded in 1970 by former Tektronix engineer Norm Winningstad, with partners Tom Prince, Frank Bouton and Rober ...
, responsible for the CS6400 SPARC/Solaris server, to
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...
for an undisclosed amount (acknowledged later by a Sun executive to be "significantly less than $100 million"). Many of the
Cray T3E The Cray T3E was Cray Research's second-generation massively parallel supercomputer architecture, launched in late November 1995. The first T3E was installed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center in 1996. Like the previous Cray T3D, it was a ful ...
engineers designed and developed the
SGI Altix SGI may refer to: Companies *Saskatchewan Government Insurance *Scientific Games International, a gambling company *Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products *Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...
and
NUMAlink NUMAlink is a system interconnect developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) for use in its distributed shared memory ccNUMA computer systems. NUMAlink was originally developed by SGI for their Origin 2000 and Onyx2 systems. At the time of these systems' ...
technology. SGI sold the Cray brand and product lines to
Tera Computer Company The Tera Computer Company was a manufacturer of high-performance computing software and hardware, founded in 1987 in Washington, D.C. and moved 1988 to Seattle, Washington by James Rottsolk and Burton Smith. The company's first supercomputer prod ...
on March 31, 2000, for $35 million plus one million shares. SGI also distributed its remaining interest in MIPS Technologies through a spin-off effective June 20, 2000. In September 2000, SGI acquired the Zx10 series of Windows workstations and servers from Intergraph Computer Systems (for a rumored $100 million), and rebadged them as SGI systems. The product line was discontinued in June 2001.


SGI Visual Workstations

Another attempt by SGI in the late 1990s to introduce its own family of Intel-based workstations running
Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...
or
Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used Commercial software, commercial Open-source software, open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. R ...
(see also
SGI Visual Workstation SGI Visual Workstation is a series of workstation computers that are designed and manufactured by SGI. Unlike its other product lines, which used the 64-bit MIPS RISC architecture, the line used Intel Pentium II and III processors and shipped ...
) proved to be a financial disaster, and shook customer confidence in SGI's commitment to its own MIPS-based line.


Switch to Itanium

In 1998, SGI announced that future generations of its machines would be based not on their own MIPS processors, but the upcoming "super-chip" from
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
, code-named "Merced" and later called
Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance comput ...
. Funding for its own high-end processors was reduced, and it was planned that the
R10000 The R10000, code-named "T5", is a RISC microprocessor implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), then a division of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). The chief designers are Chris Rowe ...
would be the last MIPS mainstream processor.
MIPS Technologies MIPS Technologies, Inc., formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides proce ...
would focus entirely on the embedded market, where it was having some success, and SGI would no longer have to fund development of a CPU that, since the failure of
ARC ARC may refer to: Business * Aircraft Radio Corporation, a major avionics manufacturer from the 1920s to the '50s * Airlines Reporting Corporation, an airline-owned company that provides ticket distribution, reporting, and settlement services * ...
, found use only in their own machines. This plan quickly went awry. As early as 1999 it was clear the Itanium was going to be delivered very late and would have nowhere near the performance originally expected. As the production delays increased, MIPS' existing R10000-based machines grew increasingly uncompetitive. Eventually it was forced to introduce faster MIPS processors, the
R12000 The R10000, code-named "T5", is a RISC microprocessor implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), then a division of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). The chief designers are Chris Rowe ...
, R14000 and R16000, which were used in a series of models from 1999 through 2006. SGI's first Itanium-based system was the short-lived SGI 750 workstation, launched in 2001. SGI's MIPS-based systems were not to be superseded until the launch of the Itanium 2-based
Altix Altix is a line of server computers and supercomputers produced by Silicon Graphics (and successor company Silicon Graphics International), based on Intel processors. It succeeded the MIPS/IRIX-based Origin 3000 servers. History The line was ...
servers and
Prism Prism usually refers to: * Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light * Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron Prism may also refer to: Science and mathematics * Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...
workstations some time later. Unlike the MIPS systems, which ran
IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system a ...
, the Itanium systems used
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server SUSE Linux Enterprise (often abbreviated to SLE) is a Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. It is available in two editions, suffixed with Server (SLES) for servers and mainframes, and Desktop (SLED) for workstations and desktop compu ...
with SGI enhancements as their
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
. SGI used
Transitive Corporation QuickTransit was a cross-platform virtualization program developed by Transitive Corporation. It allowed software compiled for one specific processor and operating system combination to be executed on a different processor and/or operating sys ...
's
QuickTransit QuickTransit was a cross-platform virtualization program developed by Transitive Corporation. It allowed software compiled for one specific processor and operating system combination to be executed on a different processor and/or operating syste ...
software to allow their old MIPS/IRIX applications to run (in emulation) on the new Itanium/Linux platform. In the server market the Itanium 2-based Altix eventually replaced the MIPS-based Origin product line. In the workstation market, the switch to Itanium was not completed before SGI exited the market. The Altix was the most powerful computer in the world in 2006, assuming that a "computer" is defined as a collection of hardware running under a single instance of an operating system. The Altix had 512 Itanium processors running under a single instance of
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
. A cluster of 20 machines was then the eighth-fastest
supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...
. All faster supercomputers were clusters, but none have as many
FLOPS In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...
per machine. However, more recent supercomputers are very large clusters of machines that are individually less capable. SGI acknowledged this and in 2007 moved away from the "massive
NUMA Nuclear mitotic apparatus protein 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''NUMA1'' gene. Interactions Nuclear mitotic apparatus protein 1 has been shown to interact with PIM1, Band 4.1, GPSM2 and EPB41L1 Band 4.1-like protein 1 is a pro ...
" model to clusters.


Switch to Xeon

Although SGI continued to market Itanium-based machines, its more recent machines were based on the Intel
Xeon Xeon ( ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded system markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same ar ...
processor. The first Altix XE systems were relatively low-end machines, but by December 2006 the XE systems were more capable than the Itanium machines by some measures (e.g., power consumption in FLOPS/W, density in FLOPS/m3, cost/FLOPS). The XE1200 and XE1300 servers used a cluster architecture. This was a departure from the pure NUMA architectures of the earlier Itanium and MIPS servers. In June 2007, SGI announced the Altix ICE 8200, a blade-based Xeon system with up to 512 Xeon cores per rack. An Altix ICE 8200 installed at New Mexico Computing Applications Center (with 14336 processors) ranked at number 3 on the TOP500 list of November 2007.


User base and core market

Conventional wisdom holds that SGI's core market has traditionally been
Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...
visual effects studios. In fact, SGI's largest
revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...
has always been generated by government and defense applications, energy, and scientific and technical computing. In one case Silicon Graphics' largest single sale ever was to the
United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
. SGI's servers powered an
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
program to mechanically read, tag and sort the mail (hand-written and block) at a number of USPS's key mail centers. The rise of cheap yet powerful commodity workstations running
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
,
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
and
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
, and the availability of diverse professional software for them, effectively pushed SGI out of the visual effects industry in all but the most
niche market A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that it ...
s.


High-end server market

SGI continued to enhance its line of servers (including some
supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructio ...
s) based on the SN architecture. SN, for Scalable Node, is a technology developed by SGI in the mid-1990s that uses cache-coherent non-uniform memory access (cc-NUMA). In an SN system, processors, memory, and a bus- and memory-controller are coupled together into an entity called a node, usually on a single
circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in Electrical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a L ...
. Nodes are connected by a high-speed interconnect called
NUMAlink NUMAlink is a system interconnect developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) for use in its distributed shared memory ccNUMA computer systems. NUMAlink was originally developed by SGI for their Origin 2000 and Onyx2 systems. At the time of these systems' ...
(originally marketed as CrayLink). There is no internal bus, and instead access between processors, memory, and I/O devices is done through a
switched fabric Switched fabric or switching fabric is a network topology in which network Node (networking), nodes interconnect via one or more network switches (particularly crossbar switches). Because a switched fabric network spreads network traffic across m ...
of links and routers. Thanks to the cache coherence of the
distributed shared memory In computer science, distributed shared memory (DSM) is a form of memory architecture where physically separated memories can be addressed as a single shared address space. The term "shared" does not mean that there is a single centralized memor ...
, SN systems scale along several axes at once: as CPU count increases, so does memory capacity, I/O capacity, and system
bisection bandwidth In computer networking, if the network is bisected into two partitions, the bisection bandwidth of a network topology is the bandwidth available between the two partitions. Bisection should be done in such a way that the bandwidth between two part ...
. This allows the combined memory of all the nodes to be accessed under a single OS image using standard shared-memory synchronization methods. This makes an SN system far easier to program and able to achieve higher sustained-to-peak performance than non-cache-coherent systems like conventional clusters or massively parallel computers which require applications code to be written (or re-written) to do explicit
message-passing In computer science, message passing is a technique for invoking behavior (i.e., running a program) on a computer. The invoking program sends a message to a process (which may be an actor or object) and relies on that process and its supporting ...
communication between their nodes. The first SN system, known as SN-0, was released in 1996 under the product name
Origin 2000 The SGI Origin 2000 is a family of mid-range and high-end Server (computing), server computers developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics (SGI). They were introduced in 1996 to succeed the SGI Challenge and POWER Challenge. At the time of in ...
. Based on the MIPS
R10000 The R10000, code-named "T5", is a RISC microprocessor implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), then a division of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). The chief designers are Chris Rowe ...
processor, it scaled from 2 to 128 processors and a smaller version, the
Origin 200 The SGI Origin 200, code named ''Speedo'', was an entry-level server computer developed and manufactured by SGI, introduced in October 1996 to accompany their mid-range and high-end Origin 2000. It is based on the same architecture as the Origi ...
(SN-00), scaled from 1 to 4. Later enhancements enabled systems of as large as 512 processors. The second generation system, originally called SN-1 but later SN-MIPS, was released in July 2000, as the
Origin 3000 The Origin 3000 and the Onyx 3000 is a family of mid-range and high-end computers developed and manufactured by SGI. The Origin 3000 is a server, and the Onyx 3000 is a visualization system. Both systems were introduced in July 2000 to succeed t ...
. It scaled from 4 to 512 processors, and 1,024-processor configurations were delivered by special order to some customers. A smaller, less scalable implementation followed, called Origin 300. In November 2002, SGI announced a repackaging of its SN system, under the name Origin 3900. It quadrupled the processor area density of the SN-MIPS system, from 32 up to 128 processors per rack while moving to a "
fat tree The fat tree network is a universal network for provably efficient communication. It was invented by Charles E. Leiserson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985. k-ary n-trees, the type of fat-trees commonly used in most high-perf ...
" interconnect topology. In January 2003, SGI announced a variant of the SN platform called the Altix 3000 (internally called SN-IA). It used
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance comput ...
2 processors and ran the
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
operating system kernel. At the time it was released, it was the world's most scalable Linux-based computer, supporting up to 64 processors in a single system node. Nodes could be connected using the same
NUMAlink NUMAlink is a system interconnect developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) for use in its distributed shared memory ccNUMA computer systems. NUMAlink was originally developed by SGI for their Origin 2000 and Onyx2 systems. At the time of these systems' ...
technology to form what SGI predictably termed "superclusters". In February 2004, SGI announced general support for 128 processor nodes to be followed by 256 and 512 processor versions that year. In April 2004, SGI announced the sale of its Alias software business for approximately $57 million. In October 2004, SGI built the supercomputer Columbia, which broke the world record for computer speed, for the
NASA Ames The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...
Research Center. It was a cluster of 20 Altix supercomputers each with 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors running Linux, and achieved sustained speed of 42.7
trillion ''Trillion'' is a number with two distinct definitions: * 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both American and British English. * 1,000,000,000,0 ...
floating-point operations per second (
teraflops In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate meas ...
), easily topping
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
's famed
Earth Simulator The is a series of supercomputers deployed at Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Yokohama Institute of Earth Sciences. Earth Simulator (first generation) The first generation of Earth Simulator, developed by the Japanese go ...
's record of 35.86 teraflops. (A week later, IBM's upgraded
Blue Gene Blue Gene is an IBM project aimed at designing supercomputers that can reach operating speeds in the petaFLOPS (PFLOPS) range, with low power consumption. The project created three generations of supercomputers, Blue Gene/L, Blue Gene/P, ...
/L clocked in at 70.7 teraflops.) In July 2006, SGI announced an SGI Altix 4700 system with 1,024 processors and 4 TB of memory running a single Linux system image.


Hardware products

Some 68k and MIPS-based models were also
rebadged In the automotive industry, rebadging is a form of market segmentation used by automobile manufacturers around the world. To allow for product differentiation without designing or engineering a new model or brand (at high cost or risk), a man ...
by other vendors, including
CDC The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgi ...
,
Tandem Computers Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for Automated teller machine, ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applicati ...
,
Prime Computer Prime Computer, Inc. was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers from 1972 until 1992. With the advent of PCs and the decline of the minicomputer industry, Prime was forced out of the market in the early 1990s, and by the end of ...
and
Siemens-Nixdorf Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme, AG (SNI) was formed in 1990 by the merger of Nixdorf Computer and the Data Information Services (DIS) division of Siemens. It functioned as a separate company within Siemens. It was the largest information ...
. SGI Onyx and SGI Indy series systems were used for game development for the
Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and ...
.


Motorola 68k-based systems

* IRIS 1000 series graphics terminals (diskless 1000/1200, 1400/1500 with disks) * IRIS 2000 series workstations (2000/2200/2300/2400/2500 non-Turbo and 2300T/2400T/2500T "Turbo" models) * IRIS 3000 series workstations (3010/3020/3030 and 3110/3115/3120/3130)


MIPS-based systems


Workstations

* Professional IRIS series (IRIS 4D/50/60/70/80/85) * Personal IRIS series (IRIS 4D/20/25/30/35) * IRIS Power Series (IRIS 4D/1x0/2x0/3x0/4x0) * IRIS Crimson (deskside workstation/server) * IRIS Indigo series (Indigo, Indigo R4000) * Indigo² series (Indigo², Power Indigo², Indigo² R10000) * Indy workstation * O2/O2+ workstation * Octane workstation * Octane2 workstation * Fuel entry-level workstation * Tezro high-end workstation


Servers

* Challenge S (desktop server) * Challenge M/Power Challenge M (desktop server) * Challenge DM (deskside server) * Challenge L/Power Challenge/Challenge 10000 (deskside server) * Challenge XL/Power Challenge XL (rack server) *
Origin 200 The SGI Origin 200, code named ''Speedo'', was an entry-level server computer developed and manufactured by SGI, introduced in October 1996 to accompany their mid-range and high-end Origin 2000. It is based on the same architecture as the Origi ...
entry-level server *
Origin 2000 The SGI Origin 2000 is a family of mid-range and high-end Server (computing), server computers developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics (SGI). They were introduced in 1996 to succeed the SGI Challenge and POWER Challenge. At the time of in ...
high-end server * Origin 300 entry-level server * Origin 350 mid-range server *
Origin 3000 The Origin 3000 and the Onyx 3000 is a family of mid-range and high-end computers developed and manufactured by SGI. The Origin 3000 is a server, and the Onyx 3000 is a visualization system. Both systems were introduced in July 2000 to succeed t ...
high-end server


Visualization

* Onyx (deskside and rackmount systems) * Power Onyx (deskside and rackmount systems) * Onyx 10000 (deskside and rackmount systems) * Onyx2 (deskside and rackmount systems) * Onyx 350 (rackmount systems) * Onyx 3000 (rackmount systems) * Onyx4 (rackmount systems) * SkyWriter (rackmount systems)


Intel IA-32-based systems


Workstations

* SGI 320 Visual Workstation (Windows NT) * SGI 540 Visual Workstation (Windows NT) * SGI 230 Workstation (Linux/Windows NT) * SGI 330 Workstation (Linux/Windows NT) * SGI 550 Workstation (Linux/Windows NT) * SGI Zx10 Visual Workstation (Windows) * SGI Zx10 VE Visual Workstation (Windows)


Servers

* SGI Zx10 Server (Windows) * SGI 1100 server (Linux/Windows) * SGI 1200 server (Linux/Windows) * SGI 1400 server (Linux/Windows) * SGI 1450 server (Linux/Windows) * SGI Internet Server (Linux) * SGI Internet Server for E-commerce (Linux) * SGI Internet Server for Messaging (Linux)


Itanium-based systems

* SGI 750 workstation * Altix 330 entry-level server * Altix 350 mid-range server * Altix 3000 high-end server * Altix 450 mid-range server * Altix 4000 high-end server, capable of up to 2048 CPUs *
Prism Prism usually refers to: * Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light * Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron Prism may also refer to: Science and mathematics * Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...
(deskside and rackmount systems)


Intel/AMD x86-64 systems

* Altix XE210 server * Altix XE240 server * Altix XE310 server * Altix XE1200 cluster * Altix XE1300 cluster * Altix ICE 8200 * Altix ICE 8400 * Virtu VN200 visualization node * Virtu VS100 workstation * Virtu VS200 workstation * Virtu VS300 workstation * Virtu VS350 workstation


FPGA-based accelerators

* RASC Application Acceleration


Storage systems

* InfiniteStorage 10000 * InfiniteStorage 6700 * InfiniteStorage 4600 * InfiniteStorage 4500 * InfiniteStorage 4000 * InfiniteStorage 350 * InfiniteStorage 220 * InfiniteStorage 120 * SGI Infinite Data Cluster


Storage solutions

* InfiniteStorage NEXIS 500 * InfiniteStorage NEXIS 2000 * InfiniteStorage NEXIS 7000 * InfiniteStorage NEXIS 7000-HA * InfiniteStorage NEXIS 9000 * InfiniteStorage Server 3500


Displays

* 1600SW, a multi-award-winning wide screen video monitor


Accelerator cards

*
IrisVision IrisVision is an expansion card developed by Silicon Graphics for IBM compatible PCs in 1991 and is one of the first 3D accelerator cards available for the high end PC market. IrisVision is an adaptation of the graphics pipeline from the Personal ...
, one of the first 3D graphics accelerators for high-end PCs


Other

* Espressigo,
Espresso Espresso (, ) is a coffee-brewing method of Italian origin, in which a small amount of nearly boiling water (about ) is forced under of pressure through finely-ground coffee beans. Espresso can be made with a wide variety of coffee beans and ...
maker in collaboration with
Gaggia Gaggia is an Italian manufacturer of coffee machines, especially espresso machine, in addition to small kitchen appliances. The company is owned by Saeco. History The founder, Giovanni Achille Gaggia (1895–1961), applied for a patent (pat ...


See also

* SCO and SGI *
Rick Belluzzo Richard "Rick" Belluzzo (born November 26, 1953) is an American businessman who worked as an executive at Hewlett-Packard (HP), Silicon Graphics (SGI), Microsoft (MS), Quantum Corp. (QTM), and Viavi Solutions (VIAV). He has served on the board o ...
, SGI CEO from January 1998 to August 1999 *
Silicon Graphics Image Silicon Graphics Image (SGI) or the RGB file format is the native raster graphics file format for Silicon Graphics workstations. The format was invented by Paul Haeberli. It can be run-length encoded (RLE). FFmpeg and ImageMagick, among others, ...


References


External links

*
Whatever Happened to SGI?

SGI timeline

Irix Network - information, forums, and archive for SGI machines

Nekochan SGI wiki





Silicon Graphics User Group
{{Authority control 1981 establishments in California 2009 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1981 Defunct computer companies based in California Companies based in Mountain View, California Companies based in Silicon Valley Companies based in Sunnyvale, California Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2006 Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 Computer companies established in 1981 Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Defunct software companies of the United States Design companies established in 1981 Electronics companies established in 1981 Electronics companies of the United States Graphics hardware companies Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Technology companies disestablished in 2009 Technology companies established in 1981