After a 12-year downhill slide, SGI is no more

By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published April 1, 2009, 12:01 PM

Silicon Graphics (SGI) logoThe former Silicon Graphics, Inc., which has officially gone by the name SGI for several years, will sell its entire assets to Rackable Systems, the low-power data center server producer, for a mere $25 million, according to an SEC filing this morning.

Of the many heroes that graced the landscape of microcomputing during its formative years, few were more outspoken and more endearing -- in that particular way that entrepreneurs can be -- than the once high-profile CEO of SGI, Ed McCracken. Throughout the 1980s, McCracken championed the ideal of producing an original architecture for graphics workstations, at a price that (hopefully) folks could afford. At a time when there were big conferences every month and keynote speakers were everywhere, McCracken was one of the biggest, speaking not only about technology but about leadership strategy and executive conduct.

But someone else had the edge on "cheap" workstations, and throughout the 1990s, SGI's value proposition was difficult to maintain against an onslaught of Intel-based workstations running Windows NT. McCracken's strategy became to trumpet the power of software, as one of the earliest practitioners of virtual reality and a principal defender of VRML, the original markup language for interactive 3D environments.

In the end, McCracken's vision could not save the day. He avoided embarrassment by leaving SGI in 1997, and almost immediately, the company began producing everyday workstations. But from then to now, it never regained its edge and never turned a page in its history. When analysts speculated that SGI could recover by creating a way to make graphics processors into x86 co-processors, Nvidia ended up seizing that ball and running away with it. This morning, Rackable stated it believed SGI would help fill out its all-around product line, though just days earlier, it was remarking how well filled-out it already was.

Comments

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1st of April fools, right?

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SGI made OpenGL.

Rest in peace.

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With a name like McCracken, you'll always be a winner to me!

Let's get it McCracken!

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Wow sad, SGI was the leading edge of 3d graphics. =(

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damn, i had one of their systems... a gray/purple heavy beast of a machine lol, i kind of still wish i had the case and could mod it

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scott@bn: you said it better than I could.

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Very sad indeed. SGI was once the ultimate performance machine that made Sci Fi and action move dreams possible. It was obvious that they wouldn't survive the joint paradigm s***s of distributed computing power, open source, and the rise of graphical computing on the PC (and Mac). Still for a few years, they were almost mythical in what they, and their machines produced.

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Sad really... I worked for them for over 16 years....but left about six years ago. Great company to work for, especially in the early years. It had the best technology & people on the planet....and the worst Management of any company I ever saw - at least after Dr Jim Clark left the company & went off to start Netscape/WebMD/MyCFO/Heatheon/etc,etc. He & McCracken were the true "sparkplugs" of the company, and it was a long downhill slide after they left.
For those not aware....Nvidia (and to a certain extent, ATI) were formed from the core graphics engineers from Silicon Graphics when the new CEO after McCracken (Rick Belluzo) decided that SGI would no longer be a Graphics Computer company (HuH, Say What????)

Too bad..Hoist a glass and salute what was once a truly great Company.....

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