SGI: Discussion

If this is true:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31135
we can say that SGI came to their senses...
About bloody time, I guess.
Otherwise, never mind

AvS

Ari wrote:

We can say that SGI came to their senses...

"SENSE" a word with no meaning in SGI!!!

Just think about the sale of their Strategy Business Unit MIPS... now they're leading;

"…providing of industry-standard processor architectures and cores for digital consumer and business applications".

A market wich grow and grow!.

Arie van Schutterhoef wrote: If this is true:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31135
we can say that SGI came to their senses...
About bloody time, I guess.
Otherwise, never mind

AvS

Pricing and availability
Star-P for SGI's Opteron-based servers will be available in the summer with pricing starting at under $8,000, and can be pre-ordered immediately.

From article theinquirer mentions http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20060417213014878

SGI leaving the sinking Itanic to the Opteronic via the woodcrest ship?
Maybe there is still some hope for SGI. If they manage to get rid of ATI fire I will buy a new SGI Workstation with Opterons as soon as it becomes available.
...
A cube logo on the new opteron boxes would be nice.

-----
Greetings from Germany

The big question is whether they will be able to nudge Sun aside enough to make any money on Optys. Sun already has a solid foot in the door, and is selling at very competitive price points.

SGI+AMD would be nice, but I'm not so sure it will save them from the hole they have dug themselves. Does SGI still have enough mental strength to engineer a competitive solution? After their recent bout of layoffs, my thinking is not.

Imagine an O2 (bloodred skins):

- Athlon64 X2 5200+
- 4GB dual channel DDR3 (humour me)
- 2x PCI-express 16x render pipelines - 512MB each
or, V16 - but now I'm reaching
- 2x S-ATAII or U320SCSI in RAID (0 or 1)
- Updated ICE (MPEG-1/2/4 & HDV in hardware or hardware assisted)
- Dual Layer DVD+RW (ATAPI for compatibility with future formats)
- Wireless USB for cable-free desktop (mouse/key/printer/...)
- FireWireII and Gigabit Ethernet on-board
- IRIX 6.6 (hell yeah) ported to match hardware
- Matching 21" superwide DVI TFT (some 2ms überpanel)
- Did I mention IRIX 6.6???
- Price tag BELOW 10,000 USD if you please...

But that would actually make sense, so it probably won't happen. MIGHT even be bad for Prism sales... Hmmm... It would mean SALES, and we can't have that, no? Would mean we have to HIRE smart people instead if firing them. What, no lay-offs next year - who would pay for some exec's new Porsche then???

Or what about that Quad Dual Core Opteron based Tezro? Bah, some bean counter would rape the design by putting MS Vista on it. HEY, that's even worse than the switch to Linsux, so it MIGHT happen after all...

Why do I keep hearing that lame Supertramp song "Dreamer" in the back of my head?

I need a beer now.

Realistic new SGI Workstation configuration:

OS: Linux (sadly there won't be Irix 6.x)
Quad dualcore AMD Opteron processors
Onboard Numalink-4
4*Onboard 1GBs Ethernet
SAS Seagate Barracuda 15.5k 300GB in Raid 0 or 6
4*nvidia Quadro FX 5500 GPU, 1GB framebuffer each. Linked by SGC
PCIx based RASC option
up to 64Gb DDR2
Price from 9999€ to 45000€

1st/2nd quarter 2007 its quad quad-core opeterons

Unfortunately nobody needs SGI to build Linux-operated Opteron-boxes. And that's the true problem of the company which will kill it. The times, where SGI built unique Unix-workstations for graphics jobs, have run out. And SGI will ever be too exspensive in comparison with its competitors. Moreover it cannot offer the same support structure like Sun, IBM, HP, Apple etc.

There IS need for SGI Linux-Opteron workstations and servers. SGI has Numalink and SGC, for the moment that is enough to justify SGI Opteron boxes. .......at least for me.

As long as those machines have more than 2 pci-e slots I guess there would be more noticeable demand.

Matthias

As I mentioned before. 4*QFX 5500 1GB clustered via SGC.
alternative 3*5500 +1*SAS or Infiniband card

They could use a modified version of Tyan Thunder K8QE because it has 4 to 8 Opteron sockets, up to 128 GB ram and 4*PCIex16 (ok, 2*16,2*8 )

DaSeitz wrote: 4*PCIex16 (ok, 2*16,2*8 )

isn't it 2*16 and 2*4 ?

But this is a very impressive board, too bad that its only sold to OEMs. In maximum combination this will be over 100K US$ mostly due to expensive memory chips. Add SGI premium logo and you'll be in the >=150K range.

Matthias

Strange. Last time i checked the Tyan site it said 2*x16, 2*x8 .
It is not that way difficult to get one. Usually they appear on ebay very soon.(And some online stores have the board in stock) (By the way I've seen a prism-team on ebay a few weeks ago).

Nvidia said there would be 2GB 512bit Quadros too, looks like we'll have to wait a few months more till they arrive.
SGI should shift from ATI to Nvidia. Fire and Linux .

Brombear wrote: But this is a very impressive board, too bad that its only sold to OEMs.

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-S4885G2

In maximum combination this will be over 100K US$ mostly due to expensive memory chips. Add SGI premium logo and you'll be in the >=150K range.

How many people do you suppose will be willing to pay fifty thousand smackers for a Silicon No-Graphics Outside ! sticker ?