Silicon Graphics: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 03:17, 5 October 2025

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was the American high-performance computing manufacturer responsible for producing IRIX, NUMALink, and all SGI hardware.

On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 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 name Silicon Graphics International.

History

Silicon Graphics Computer Systems was founded in 1982 by James "Jim" Clark along with a group of seven graduate students and research staff from Stanford University. They specialized in high speed real time 3D graphics at a time when the market was extremely niche. In 1984 Ed McCracken was appointed CEO of Silicon Graphics. During his tenure, SGI grew from annual revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion.

Their first machines were based on the Sun Multibus architecture and were among the first to use Very Large Scale Integration for implementation of key chips such as the Geometry Engine. Later, SGI partnered with MIPS Computer Systems and their Professional IRIS machines were released using the MIPS R2000 CPU. Later, SGI would purchase MIPS Computer Systems and all of their assets including the MIPS ISA, RISC/OS, and their staff.

By 1994 Jim Clark resigned his position on the board as the company's continued focus on the high-end graphics and HPC solutions was in conflict with his wider view in favor of consumer graphics.

In 1997 Ed McCracken was fired as the CEO in the face of falling share prices and a bleak outlook for the company. Richard Belluzzo was brought in to replace him, and Richard accelerated the company's decline by purchasing several companies including Intergraph, Cray Research and others. He also pushed for the Visual Workstation 320 and Visual Workstation 540, neither of which achieved projected commercial success. The acquistions, and later sell-offs, of various assets, led to criticism of Belluzzo's handling, especially as SGI lost money 5 out of the 6 quarters he was CEO. He was fired in 1999.

Robert Bishop was put in charge and under him SGI continued to struggle, making small market gains and losses until 2005, when SGI neared bankruptcy.

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 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 and its use of a $70 million financing facility provided by a group of its bondholders. Foreign subsidiaries were unaffected.

MIPS had languished for some time under SGI, as the last major revision, the R12000 was released in 1998 -- all succeeding designs were process shrinks and clock bumps of the R12000. The canceled R18000 led to SGI partnering with the Intel-HP Itanium project, and they abandoned the MIPS product line in late 2006.

In December 2008, SGI received a delisting notification from NASDAQ, 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 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.

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 == History ==
+Silicon Graphics Computer Systems was founded in 1982 by James "Jim" Clark along with a group of seven graduate students and research staff from Stanford University. They specialized in high speed real time 3D graphics at a time when the market was extremely niche.  In 1984 Ed McCracken was appointed CEO of Silicon Graphics. During his tenure, SGI grew from annual revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion.
-=== Early years ===
+Their first machines were based on the Sun Multibus architecture and were among the first to use Very Large Scale Integration for implementation of key chips such as the Geometry Engine. Later, SGI partnered with MIPS Computer Systems and their [[Professional IRIS]] machines were released using the MIPS R2000 CPU. Later, SGI would purchase MIPS Computer Systems and all of their assets including the [[MIPS]] ISA, [[RISC/OS]], and their staff.
-James H. Clark left his position as an electrical engineering associate professor at Stanford 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, and Mark Grossman; along with Abbey Silverstone and a few others.
-=== Growth ===
+By 1994 Jim Clark resigned his position on the board as the company's continued focus on the high-end graphics and HPC solutions was in conflict with his wider view in favor of consumer graphics.
-Ed McCracken was CEO of Silicon Graphics from 1984 to 1997. During those years, SGI grew from annual revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion. Silicon Graphics systems dominated the market for high-speed rendering of three-dimensional graphics, an area rivals like IBM and Sun Microsystems avoided.
-=== Decline ===
+In 1997 Ed McCracken was fired as the CEO in the face of falling share prices and a bleak outlook for the company. Richard Belluzzo was brought in to replace him, and Richard accelerated the company's decline by purchasing several companies including Intergraph, Cray Research and others. He also pushed for the [[Visual Workstation 320]] and [[Visual Workstation 540]], neither of which achieved projected commercial success. The acquistions, and later sell-offs, of various assets, led to criticism of Belluzzo's handling, especially as SGI lost money 5 out of the 6 quarters he was CEO. He was fired in 1999.
-The addition of 3D graphic capabilities to PCs, and the ability of clusters of Linux- 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 to Linux, Mac OS and Microsoft 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 in Richard Belluzzo to replace him. Under Belluzzo's leadership a number of initiatives were taken which are considered to have accelerated the corporate decline.
+Robert Bishop was put in charge and under him SGI continued to struggle, making small market gains and losses until 2005, when SGI neared bankruptcy.
-One such initiative was trying to sell workstations running Windows NT called Visual Workstations in addition to workstations running IRIX, 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, 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 because its common stock had fallen below the minimum share price for listing on the exchange. SGI's market capitalization dwindled from a peak of over seven billion 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 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.
@@ Line 33: / Line 18: @@
 On May 8, 2006, SGI announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 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 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.
+MIPS had languished for some time under SGI, as the last major revision, the [[R12000]] was released in 1998 -- all succeeding designs were process shrinks and clock bumps of the R12000. The canceled R18000 led to SGI partnering with the Intel-HP [[Itanium]] project, and they abandoned the MIPS product line in late 2006.
-SGI emerged from bankruptcy protection on October 17, 2006. Its stock symbol on Pink Sheets at that point, ''SGID'', 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. Its earlier North Shoreline headquarters is now occupied by the Computer History Museum; the newer Amphitheatre Parkway headquarters was sold to Google (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 or AMD Opteron processors and Nvidia Quadro graphics chipsets, running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Windows Compute Cluster Server.
-=== Final bankruptcy and acquisition by Rackable Systems ===
 In December 2008, SGI received a delisting notification from NASDAQ, 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 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.<sup>[''needs update'']</sup>
+On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 11 again, and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to [[Rackable Systems]] 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.
-After the Rackable acquisition, ''Vizworld'' magazine published a 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 SGI Pleiades, a TOP500 supercomputer at NASA Ames Research Center, in its portfolio.