SGI: Discussion

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/09/sgi_new_ceo/

"Dennis McKenna lasted all of 14 months as CEO of SGI.
The server maker today tapped Robert "Bo" Ewald as its new chief. Ewald used to head up Linux Networx, Scale Eight and E-Stamp, so he's quite familiar with CEO duties. The hardware buff also once worked as COO of both SGI and Cray."

Which is rather fast, even for SGI I guess.
Maybe it's a good thing the new guy has previous experiences in the field
(in & outside...)

AvS

As far as I have his biography in mind, McKenna is a manager who used to rescue companies and carry on afterwards. So it's no time for being anxious imho.

If he makes them bring IRIX back, especially with a new hat in the MIPS ring, he's truly a miracle worker.

Heck port Irix to x86.

zizban wrote: Heck port Irix to x86.

i hope not

wishing here, but a mips chip with a on board memory controller, and on die hypertransport. hypertransport to numalink chip. or maybe intel's new CSI, but IBM's new power is going to have hypertransport I think.

No, definately not IRIX on x86. It's not l33t enough.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SGIC&t=6m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

Seems like there are good expectations on the marked concerning the CEO change.

Geoman wrote: Seems like there are good expectations on the marked concerning the CEO change.

By the time the old CEO has thoroughly disappointed everyone, they could name Bozo as next CEO and the stock price would go up

Ah no. The old CEO disappointed us fans and freaks by dismissing graphics. But he did what he had to do quite well.

hamei wrote:

Geoman wrote: Seems like there are good expectations on the marked concerning the CEO change.

By the time the old CEO has thoroughly disappointed everyone, they could name Bozo as next CEO and the stock price would go up

lol...long live bozo

the old CEO disappointed us fans and freaks by dismissing graphics. But he did what he had to do quite well.

Yup, like throw out all the graphics technology and make products that nobody gave a rat's ass about while other companies make a fortune on graphics for consumers

It was the only way

lol...long live bozo

I 2nd that!

Timberoz>Craig

zizban wrote: Heck port Irix to x86.

What would be the point of that?

For one it might see some new software come to the platform. Or better still support stay for some of the older products that left. Maya, Discreet apps just to name a few.

Or see ongoing development for existing ports.

Timberoz

Timberoz wrote: For one it might see some new software come to the platform. Or better still support stay for some of the older products that left. Maya, Discreet apps just to name a few.

Or see ongoing development for existing ports.

Timberoz

You'd get all this by porting IRIX to x86?!?!?! How??? I know IRIX is pretty magical, but it will be able to turn old MIPS binary into shiny new x86 code?

He probably meant to imply that Discreet, Adobe et al might consider maintaining an IRIX port if it were ported to a more 'popular' (please, no evangelists splitting hairs on that choice of terms) architecture.

Of course, this wholly ignores the issue of why a big-name post-production studio or other VFX / general CG studio would shell out gobs of money on 'IRIX86' licenses and 'IRIX86' ports of software that already works fine and has up-to-date ports on Linux or (god forbid) Windows platforms.

MooglyGuy wrote: He probably meant to imply that Discreet, Adobe et al might consider maintaining an IRIX port if it were ported to a more 'popular' (please, no evangelists splitting hairs on that choice of terms) architecture.

But this would not involve maintaining existing code, this would mean writing new code, that's where I was getting at... That would be the same logic as expecting Solaris Sparc applications to work on Solaris x86...

zizban wrote: Heck port Irix to x86.

If what people on here who appear to have seen the IRIX source say is true, then the code is quite specific to MIPS/SGI hardware, so an x86 port would involve quite a bit of work. Then consider the additional work needed to update IRIX to what would be considered a modern UNIX desktop OS that can compete for business with Linux - full USB + firewire support, lots of PCI drivers for x86 hw, more file systems, Linux/X86 binary compatibility, a more impressive UI.... etc.

I think the new CEO would not last long if he tried to finance all this, especially when Linux is now fairly acceptable to companies*, and it already has all this functionality.

* It is quite ironic for me to see how companies now find Linux/Open Source so acceptable. I still remember the long series of high level meetings held at a multinational I worked at a decade ago in order for senior management to determine if SAMBA was ok to use in a production environment.

It's not just that there'd be a lot of specific code, is that being SGI's Unix is the main point of IRIX.

You know how all that works! Companies license the Unix source code then they customize it for their platform. IRIX is a Unix like any other with your command line and Motif and all that jazz, the whole point is it's going to run on your MIPS SGI, provide awesome MIPS compilers, offer full OpenGL and support for the 8 channel sound cards and 48-bit framebuffers and fifty mega billion jillion terabytes of RAM and whatnot.

IRIX has lots and lots of neat features and big numbers but so will most proprietary platforms for very big computers.