 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| NYSE: SGI OTC Pink: SGID.pk Nasdaq: SGIC | |
| Industry | Computer hardware andsoftware |
| Founded | November 9, 1981; 44 years ago (1981-11-09) Mountain View,California, U.S.[1] |
| Defunct | May 11, 2009; 16 years ago (2009-05-11) |
| Fate | Chapter 11 bankruptcy; assets acquired byRackable Systems, which renamed itselfSilicon Graphics International Corp. |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale,California, U.S. |
Key people | Jim Clark Wei Yen Kurt Akeley Ed McCracken Thomas Jermoluk Marc Hannah Rick Belluzzo |
| Products | High-performance computing,visualization andstorage |
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized asSiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebrandedSGI, historically known asSilicon Graphics Computer Systems orSGCS) was an Americanhigh-performance computing manufacturer, producingcomputer hardware andsoftware. Founded inMountain View, California, in November 1981 byJames H. Clark, the computer scientist and entrepreneur perhaps best known for foundingNetscape (withMarc Andreessen).[2] Its initial market was3D graphicscomputer workstations, but its products, strategies and market positions developed significantly over time.
Early systems were based on theGeometry Engine that Clark andMarc Hannah had developed atStanford University, and were derived from Clark's broader background incomputer graphics. The Geometry Engine was the firstvery-large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation of ageometry pipeline, 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 aDelaware corporation in January 1990. Through the mid to late-1990s, the rapidly improving performance of commodityWintel machines began to erode SGI's stronghold in the 3D market. The porting ofMaya to other platforms was a major event in this process. SGI made several attempts to address this, including a disastrous move from their existingMIPS platforms to theIntel Itanium, as well as introducing their ownLinux-basedIntel IA-32 based workstations and servers that failed in the market. In the mid-2000s the company repositioned itself as asupercomputer vendor, a move that also failed.
On April 1, 2009, SGI filed forChapter 11 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 nameSilicon Graphics International. The remnants of Silicon Graphics, Inc. became Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc.
James H. Clark left his position as an electrical engineering associate professor atStanford University 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, andMark Grossman;[4] along withAbbey Silverstone[5] and a few others.
Ed McCracken wasCEO of Silicon Graphics from 1984 to 1997.[6] During those years, SGI grew from annual revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion.[6] Silicon Graphics systems dominated the market for high-speed rendering of three-dimensional graphics, an area rivals like IBM and Sun Microsystems avoided.[7]
The addition of 3D graphic capabilities toPCs, and the ability of clusters ofLinux- andBSD-based PCs to take on many of the tasks of larger SGI servers, ate into SGI's core markets. The porting ofMaya toLinux, Mac OS andMicrosoft Windows 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 was fired and SGI brought inRichard Belluzzo to replace him. Under Belluzzo's leadership a number of initiatives were taken which are considered to have accelerated the corporate decline.[8]
One such initiative was trying to sell workstations runningWindows NT calledVisual Workstations in addition to workstations runningIRIX, the company's version ofUNIX. 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 (theVisual 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 firmLandor Associates, 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 theNew York Stock Exchange because its common stock had fallen below the minimum share price for listing on the exchange. SGI'smarket capitalization dwindled from a peak of over sevenbillion 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.[9]
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 areverse stock split 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 succeededRobert Bishop, who remained vice chairman of the board of directors.
On May 8, 2006, SGI announced that it had filed forChapter 11 bankruptcy protection for itself and U.S. subsidiaries as part of a plan to reduce debt by $250 million.[10][11] Two days later, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved its first daymotions 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.[12] 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.[13] Its stock symbol onPink Sheets at that point,SGID, was canceled, and new stock was issued on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbolSGIC.[14] This new stock was distributed to the company's creditors, and the SGID common stockholders were left with worthless shares.[15] At the end of that year, the company moved its headquarters fromMountain View toSunnyvale.[16] Its earlier North Shoreline headquarters is now occupied by theComputer History Museum; the newer Amphitheatre Parkway headquarters was sold toGoogle (which had already subleased and moved into the facility in 2003). Both of these locations were award-winning designs byStudios Architecture.[17][18]
In April 2008, SGI re-entered the visualization market with theSGI Virtu range of visualization servers and workstations, which were re-badged systems fromBOXX Technologies based onIntel Xeon orAMD Opteron processors andNvidia Quadro graphics chipsets, runningRed Hat Enterprise Linux,SUSE Linux Enterprise Server orWindows Compute Cluster Server.[19]
In December 2008, SGI received a delisting notification fromNASDAQ, 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.[20]
On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 11 again, and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets toRackable Systems for $25 million.[21] 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.[22][23] The Bankruptcy Court scheduled continuing proceedings and hearings for June 3 and 24, 2009, and July 22, 2009.[24][25][needs update]
After the Rackable acquisition,Vizworld magazine publisheda series of six articles that chronicle the downfall of SGI.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquired Silicon Graphics International in November 2016, which allowed HPE to place the SGIPleiades, aTOP500 supercomputer at NASA Ames Research Center, in its portfolio.[26][27][28][29]
During Silicon Graphics Inc.'s second bankruptcy phase, it was renamed to Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc.(GPHI) in June 2009.[30][31]
In 2010, GPHI announced it had won a significant favorable ruling in its litigation with ATI Technologies and AMD in June 2010,[32][33] following the patent lawsuit originally filed during the Silicon Graphics, Inc. era.[34] Following the 2008 appeal by ATI over the validity ofU.S. patent 6,650,327 ('327) and Silicon Graphics Inc's voluntary dismissal of theU.S. patent 6,885,376 ('376) patent from the lawsuit,[35] 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.[36] 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.[37] 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.[38]
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),U.S. patent 6,816,145 ('145) andU.S. patent 5,717,881 ('881).[39]
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.[40][41][42]
SGI's first generation products, starting with theIRIS (Integrated Raster Imaging System) 1000 series of high-performance graphics terminals, were based on theMotorola 68000 family ofmicroprocessors.[43][44] The later IRIS 2000 and 3000 models developed into fullUNIXworkstations.[45]
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 aDigital Equipment CorporationVAX, to provide graphicalraster display abilities. They used 8 MHz Motorola 68000 CPUs with768 kB of RAM and had nodisk drives. They booted over the network[43] (via anExcelan EXOS/101 Ethernet card) from their controlling computer. They used the "PM1" CPU board, which was a variant of the board that was used inStanford University'sSUN workstation and later in theSun-1 workstation fromSun Microsystems. The graphics system was composed of the GF1frame buffer, the UC3 "Update Controller", DC3 "Display Controller", and the BP2 bitplane. The 1000-series machines were designed around theMultibus standard.
Later 1000-series machines, the 1400 and 1500, ran at 10 MHz and had 1.5 MB of RAM. The 1400 had a 72 MBST-506 disk drive, while the 1500 had a 474 MB SMD-based disk drive with aXylogics 450 disk controller. They may have used the PM2 CPU and PM2M1 RAM board from the 2000 series.[44] The usual monitor for the 1000 series ran at 30 Hzinterlaced. 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.
SGI rapidly developed its machines into workstations with its second product line — the IRIS 2000 series, first released in August 1985.[46] SGI began using theUNIX System Voperating system. There were five models in two product ranges, the 2000/2200/2300/2400/2500 range which used68010 CPUs (the PM2 CPU module), and the later "Turbo" systems, the 2300T, 2400T and 2500T, which had68020s (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, andWeitekFloating Point Accelerator boards, disk controllers and disk drives (bothST-506 andSMD 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 approximately68 kg each.[47] The non-Turbo models used theMultibus 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 completeUNIX 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 3,500 systems shipped of all 2000 and 3000 models combined.[48]
With the introduction of the IRIS 4D series, SGI switched toMIPS 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 calledIRIX. 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 available64-bit microprocessor, theR4000. SGI used the R4000 in itsCrimson 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-bitR4000), SGI acquired the company in 1992[49] for $333 million[50][51] and renamed it as MIPS Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI.[52]
In 1993, Silicon Graphics (SGI) signed a deal withNintendo to develop theReality Coprocessor (RCP)GPU used in theNintendo 64 (N64) video game console. The deal was signed in early 1993, and it was later made public in August of that year.[53] The console itself was later released in 1996. The RCP was developed by SGI's Nintendo Operations department, led by engineerDr. Wei Yen. In 1997, twenty SGI employees, led by Yen, left SGI and foundedArtX (later acquired byATI Technologies in 2000).[54]
In 1998, SGI relinquished some ownership of MIPS Technologies, Inc in aRe-IPO, and fully divested itself in 2000.[55]
In the late 1990s, when much of the industry expected theItanium to replace bothCISC andRISC architectures in non-embedded computers, SGI announced their intent to phase out MIPS in their systems. Development of new MIPS microprocessors stopped, and the existingR12000 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,[56] and by the end of the year MIPS/IRIX products were no longer generally available from SGI.
Until the second generation OnyxReality Engine machines, SGI offered access to its high performance 3D graphics subsystems through a proprietaryAPI known asIRIS Graphics Library (IRIS GL). 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 resultingOpenGL 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).[57][58][59][60][61]
This meant that for the first time, fast, efficient, cross-platform graphics programs could be written.[57][58][59][60][61] For over 20 years – until the introduction of theVulkan API[62][63][64][65] – OpenGL remained the only real-time 3D graphics standard to be portable across a variety of operating systems.[57][58][59][60][61]
SGI was part of the Advanced Computing Environment initiative, formed in the early 1990s with 20 other companies, includingCompaq,Digital Equipment Corporation,MIPS Computer Systems,Groupe Bull,Siemens,NEC,NeTpower,Microsoft andSanta Cruz Operation.[66][67][68][69] Its intent was to introduce workstations based on theMIPS architecture and able to runWindows NT andSCO UNIX.[70][71] The group produced theAdvanced RISC Computing (ARC) specification,[70] but began to unravel little more than a year after its formation.[72][73]
For eight consecutive years (1995–2002), all films nominated for anAcademy Award for Distinguished Achievement in Visual Effects were created on Silicon Graphics computer systems.[74] The technology was also used in commercials for a host of companies.
AnSGI Crimson system with the fsn[75]three-dimensional file system navigator appeared in the 1993 movieJurassic Park.[76]
In the movieTwister, 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.[77]
The 1995 filmCongo also features an SGI laptop computer being used by Dr. Ross (Laura Linney) to communicate via satellite to TraviCom HQ.[78]
The purple, lowercased "sgi" logo can be seen at the beginning of the opening credits of theHBO seriesSilicon Valley, before being taken down and replaced by theGoogle logo as the intro graphics progress.[79] Google leased the former SGI buildings in 2003 for their headquarters inMountain View, CA until they purchased the buildings outright in 2006.[80][81][82]
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 fordigital video and the Web. Many SGI graphics engineers left to work at other computer graphics companies such asATI andNvidia, contributing to the PC 3D graphics revolution.
SGI was a promoter offree software,[citation needed] supporting several projects such asLinux andSamba, and opening some of its own previously proprietary code such as theXFS filesystem and theOpen64 compiler.
SGI was also important in its contribution to the C++Standard Template Library (STL) with many useful extensions in theMIT-like licensed SGI STL implementation. The extension keeps being carried by the direct descendantSTLport and GNU'slibstdc++.[83]
In 1995, SGI purchased Alias Research,Kroyer Films, andWavefront Technologies in a deal totaling approximately $500 million and merged the companies into Alias|Wavefront. In June 2004 SGI sold the business, later renamed toAlias/Wavefront, to the private equity investment firm Accel-KKR for $57.5 million.[84] In October 2005,Autodesk announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Alias for $182 million in cash.[85][86][87]
In February 1996, SGI purchased the well-knownsupercomputer manufacturerCray Research for $740 million,[88] and began to use marketing names such as "CrayLink" for (SGI-developed) technology integrated into the SGI server line. Three months later, it sold theCray Business Systems Division, responsible for theCS6400 SPARC/Solaris server, toSun Microsystems for an undisclosed amount (acknowledged later by a Sun executive to be "significantly less than $100 million").[89][90] Many of theCray T3E engineers designed and developed theSGI Altix andNUMAlink technology. SGI sold the Cray brand and product lines toTera Computer Company on March 31, 2000, for $35 million plus one million shares.[91] 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 fromIntergraph Computer Systems (for a rumored $100 million), and rebadged them as SGI systems. The product line was discontinued in June 2001.
Another attempt by SGI in the late 1990s to introduce its own family of Intel-based workstations runningWindows NT orRed Hat Linux (see alsoSGI Visual Workstation)[92][93][94][95][96] proved to be a financial disaster, and shook customer confidence in SGI's commitment to its own MIPS-based line.
In 1998, SGI announced that future generations of its machines would be based not on their own MIPS processors, but the upcoming "super-chip" fromIntel, code-named "Merced" and later calledItanium. Funding for its own high-end processors was reduced, and it was planned that theR10000 would be the last MIPS mainstream processor.MIPS Technologies 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 ofARC, found use only in their own machines. TheOrigin 2000 server line was intended to get nodeboards loaded with Merced.[97][98] Production and development delays in as early as 1999 made it clear that the Merced release was going to be delivered late.[99] Stopgap MIPS CPUs, all refinements of the successful R10000 such as theR12000,R14000 andR16000 were released. These were used in a series of MIPS servers and workstations from 1999 through 2006.[100]
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 theItanium 2-basedAltix servers andPrism workstations some time later. Unlike the MIPS systems, which ranIRIX, the Itanium systems usedSuSE Linux Enterprise Server with SGI enhancements as theiroperating system. SGI usedTransitive Corporation'sQuickTransit 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 ofLinux. A cluster of 20 machines was then the eighth-fastestsupercomputer. All faster supercomputers were clusters, but none have as manyFLOPS 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 "massiveNUMA" model to clusters.
Although SGI continued to market Itanium-based machines, its more recent machines were based on the IntelXeon 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.[101] 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.
Conventional wisdom holds that SGI's core market has traditionally beenHollywood visual effects studios. In fact, SGI's largestrevenue has always been generated by government and defense applications, energy, and scientific and technical computing.[102] In one case Silicon Graphics' largest single sale ever was to theUnited States Postal Service. SGI's servers powered anartificial intelligence 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 runningLinux,Windows andMac OS X, and the availability of diverse professional software for them, effectively pushed SGI out of the visual effects industry in all but the mostniche markets.
SGI continued to enhance its line of servers (including somesupercomputers) based on theSN architecture. SN, for Scalable Node, is a technology developed by SGI in the mid-1990s that usescache-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 singlecircuit board. Nodes are connected by a high-speed interconnect calledNUMAlink (originally marketed asCrayLink). There is nointernal bus, and instead access between processors, memory, andI/O devices is done through aswitched fabric of links androuters.
Thanks to the cache coherence of thedistributed shared memory, SN systems scale along several axes at once: as CPU count increases, so does memory capacity, I/O capacity, and systembisection bandwidth. This allows the combined memory of all the nodes to be accessed under a singleOS image using standardshared-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 conventionalclusters ormassively parallel computers which require applications code to be written (or re-written) to do explicitmessage-passing communication between their nodes.
The first SN system, known as SN-0, was released in 1996 under the product nameOrigin 2000. Based on the MIPSR10000 processor, it scaled from 2 to 128 processors and a smaller version, theOrigin 200 (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 theOrigin 3000. 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" interconnect topology.
In January 2003, SGI announced a variant of the SN platform called theAltix 3000 (internally called SN-IA). It usedIntelItanium 2 processors and ran theLinux 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.[103] Nodes could be connected using the sameNUMAlink 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.[104]
In October 2004, SGI built the supercomputerColumbia, which broke the world record for computer speed, for theNASA Ames Research Center. It was a cluster of 20Altix supercomputers each with 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors running Linux, and achieved sustained speed of 42.7trillion floating-point operations per second (teraflops), easily toppingJapan's famedEarth Simulator's record of 35.86 teraflops. (A week later,IBM's upgradedBlue Gene/L clocked in at 70.7 teraflops.)
In July 2006, SGI announced an SGI Altix 4700 system with 1,024 processors and 4TB of memory running a single Linux system image.[105]
Some 68k- and MIPS-based models were alsorebadged by other vendors, includingCDC,Tandem Computers,Prime Computer andSiemens-Nixdorf.SGI Onyx and SGI Indy series systems were used forvideo game development for theNintendo 64.
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