SGI: Hardware

I suspect there was far more many single CPU SGIs made which made their way into hobbyists hands.
Anyone have quantities of production runs?

Edit: Sorry for mucking this up and reseting the votes by adding another option.

R.

PymbleSoftware wrote: Anyone have quantities of production runs?

Now that would be some interesting info!

Single wins out only if you don't weight by number of CPUs...

The local fleabay and other auction sites often have Indys and O2s, very rarely anything more interesting or with more CPUs, therefore there seems to be liquidity in the low end market which means high-end stuff is more successfully hoarded or they simply made and sold a lot more of the lower end machines. For every Tezro or o300 that turns up there seems to be at least 5 to 6 Indys, maybe that is my bias.

R.

PymbleSoftware wrote: The local fleabay and other auction sites often have Indys and O2s, very rarely anything more interesting or with more CPUs, therefore there seems to be liquidity in the low end market which means high-end stuff is more successfully hoarded or they simply made and sold a lot more of the lower end machines. For every Tezro or o300 that turns up there seems to be at least 5 to 6 Indys, maybe that is my bias.

R.

There are several things that tilt the scales in favor of unis. First, SGIs heyday was when multis were generally physically large, and large systems take up space so they tend to be surplused rather then kept and are less likely to be grabbed and held by a hobbyist.

Secondly, multiproc SGIs (and Alphas, and RS/6ks, etc.) are significantly more expensive than unis. SMP really only came down in price with the intro of multicore CPUs (let's admit here that from a technical perspective there is little difference between a multiproc/single core and single-socket multi-core except in system board/logic complexity). Companies would tend to get a few fast machines and more smaller machines that people would use to get stuff ready to run on the Onyx or Origin. Combine this with point #1 and you have fewer out the door plus fewer kept on the big boxes.

For SGI you also have the smaller multis (O300, Tezro) coming later when customers were moving away from IRIX. Yes, O200 and Octane SMP did come at the end of the heyday, but uff-da, the pricing on those was steep and you didn't have the capability that a machine such as the SS20 had of plugging in a second CPU later, as the SGIs relied on dual CPU processor modules or PIMMS to get a second CPU. (exception would be IP19/IP21/IP25 and possibly IP27, but for at least IP25 SGI left out board logic for CPUs that were not installed, effectively eliminating the chance of a later upgrade that didn't require a board swap).

I like to have a SMP example of everything, but it took awhile for the non-Intel and non-Sun archs. I now have a Challenge, duallie Octane and two Origins (O200 and O2k) with SMP, but for a long time I was uni-only for Siggys (still am for VAX, POWER, Alpha, HPPA and a couple other oddies). Still have more uni SGIs than multis, too.

Sitting on five Octanes at the moment, all but one are dual. Two Indigo2's, two Fuels, but one is really a parts machine. And then the pair of 4-way O300s puts it over the top for the MP camp...

Never had a dual SGI but a good 3/4 of my Sun and HP machines are SMP. I don't think SGI pushed SMP workstations as much as other brands did.

My only remaining SGIs are multiprocessor: one chassis unit of Origin2000 (with SI graphics) and my Origin 350 / VPro setup.

I think many hobbyist SGIs are uniprocessor because there were a lot more of them to begin with, and they were more likely to end up on desks where they were resold or taken rather than in server rooms where they were carefully monitored and recycled, auctioned, or scrapped.

I voted single but not by much, if we're counting all owned computers.

Voted for singles, but in fact I have 4 uniprocessors and 1 four-processors...
Processors-count, nobody wins, 50:50 (very swiss indeed, compromise culture )

BetXen wrote: Voted for singles, but in fact I have 4 uniprocessors and 1 four-processors...
Processors-count, nobody wins, 50:50 (very swiss indeed, compromise culture )

But your sig lists five single-processor machines!

I voted 'single'. It's easy to have 'a couple of Indigo2s', for example I have one of every flavor (R4400, R8000, R10000). Cannot do that with desksides due to space constraints so I have one, but I have a set of IP19, IP21 and IP25 CPU boards for it so I can still run it in any configuration I want. Leaving out a couple of Indy/Indigo2/O2 in storage for spares I have:

9x Multi CPU
4D/380VGX (8)
4D/440VGX (4)
Challenge L (12)
Onyx IR (4)
Onyx2 IR3 (4)
O200 (2)
O350 (8)
Octane MXE (2)
Octane2 V12 (2)

14x Single CPU
4D/70GT
Crimson RE
4D/35
3x Indigo
2x Indy
3x Indigo2
Challenge S
O2
Fuel

Sold my 2 dual 400 octane chips a while back when I really needed some money.
I now have 2 working machines with single 300's, about 3 spares and one dual 195 chip sat around doing nothing.

!m!

I voted multi-processor because it represents all the SGI stuff I have running - a 16p Onyx300, a 8p Onyx O350 InfintePerformannce, and a 4p Tezro.

I do still have two O2s, but those are just sitting on the shelf unused, balanced out by a dual-processor Octane (in the same condition).

Voted uniprocessor. Have no multiprocessors. But I hope I will get one someday.