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SGI suing ATI


dexter11
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After everything they've gone through, am hoping they make the come-back. Seems they've had really bad luck, considering a lot of it seems to be down to one person!

I heard an interesting opinion about this. Ten or more years ago SGI machines already knew what recent computers know today in graphics but of course for a way more money. If they choose to make video chips instead of sticking with high-end servers and their own version of UNIX, no matter how good they were, maybe we would know them as a market leader instead of a company which nearly went bankrupt. So much about their bad luck, they just made a wrong decision and they paid for it dearly.

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I'm wondering if, with these lawsuits (they mentioned several other patents they have...this may just be the first) they are attempting to:

  1. Gain funds from it (why thank you, captain obvious!). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, if patents were infringed upon then they should be compensated.
  2. Use those funds to get themselves back into business (oh, really??).
  3. Take ATI out of the graphics card race (depending on the resulting settlement if SGI wins this case).

With SGI's background with NVIDIA, they probably won't take on NVIDIA in a court case again. However, if they take ATI out of the race the essentially open up a slot for themselves - they could slither their way in there if they wanted to get back into the GPU market. Maybe not, it's just a wild thought really ;) - but why that would be interesting is because of SGI's involvement in OpenGL (it used to be IrisGL). And with OpenGL's recent moves forward (it was stagnant for a while there) having a major OpenGL player in the GPU business could create some interesting developments.

 

Well, now that I've let my mind go wild with speculation...:lol2:

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After everything they've gone through, am hoping they make the come-back. Seems they've had really bad luck, considering a lot of it seems to be down to one person!

I heard an interesting opinion about this. Ten or more years ago SGI machines already knew what recent computers know today in graphics but of course for a way more money. If they choose to make video chips instead of sticking with high-end servers and their own version of UNIX, no matter how good they were, maybe we would know them as a market leader instead of a company which nearly went bankrupt. So much about their bad luck, they just made a wrong decision and they paid for it dearly.

The thing is that those graphics subsystems only worked on high end specific architecture. I worked with them and they were awesome .. really awesome but no market existed outside of scientific or military ..

 

If you actually look back then there were hundreds (literally) of PC graphics card makers at the time ... since mostly gobbled up by NVIDIA and ATI ... in most cases simply to eliminate competition and/or gain IP.

Put simply, what did Nvidia or ATI ever invent? (Im sure they did a few things but mostly they aquired)

 

SGI on the other hand was innovative and into research... and since the machines were mainly used by people in research this was a nice combo. Pretty much the SGI's were to research establishments what Mac's were to design studios although like Mac (and unlike IBM) they also managed to make the things look pretty.

 

I'll paste some tyme in now because those are some good points....

# Gain funds from it (why thank you, captain obvious!). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, if patents were infringed upon then they should be compensated.

Pretty much capt'n ... I don't think SGI ever really worried about patents or enforcing them because they were always so far ahead on the curve.

 

I think the way I realised this was visiting the offices ....

Sun offices are easily recognisable .. the mix of performance cars in the car park is the first clue whereas SGI car parks tended to be rare speciality cars or vintage etc. IBM offices are usually high rise and have underground parking but IBM seem to choose UGLY buildings in concrete and the cars are all mainstream, boring and gray.

Sun devels and workers wear Ralph Lauren or armani 'jeans' .... SGI could be almost anyrhing above the sandles and of course IBM is gray suits.

 

If you haven't noticed by now i have a certain fondness for the SGI's :D

You could take a sun box and stick it in your living room indeed you could stick it on your shelf with the stereo next to the Tv and it wouldn't look outa place... an IBM you need to hide in a TV cupbaord or something, $DEITY those things are UGLY.... (I know I already said that but they are really really ugly)

Take an SGI and stick it next to the stereo, heck THROW OUT THE TV its a piece of art.

 

Anyway, in summary,,, I don't think the be-sandled woolly tree hugging SGI people ever gave a toot about people stealing IP. Remember they were one of the first to support OpenSource .. way before IBM ... and GIVE AWAY OpenGL.... really IMHO the biggest contribution to desktop linux is OpenGL... this is what seperates the mandrake7 desktop days from today more than anything....

2. Use those funds to get themselves back into business (oh, really??).

3. Take ATI out of the graphics card race (depending on the resulting settlement if SGI wins this case).

 

With SGI's background with NVIDIA, they probably won't take on NVIDIA in a court case again. However, if they take ATI out of the race the essentially open up a slot for themselves - they could slither their way in there if they wanted to get back into the GPU market. Maybe not, it's just a wild thought really wink.gif - but why that would be interesting is because of SGI's involvement in OpenGL (it used to be IrisGL). And with OpenGL's recent moves forward (it was stagnant for a while there) having a major OpenGL player in the GPU business could create some interesting developments.

 

Yep I m wondering if this isn't a Apple style turnaround or trying to be.

Today almost noone hasn't heard of an iPod... although there are some folks in the Kalahari desert apparently ... but pre iPod far fewer people really knew who apple were.

 

Apple has become an appliance company but equally they have also branched into servers ....

Perhaps this is the idea of SGI? Sell GPU's as an appliance name while propping up the rest of the business?

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The thing is that those graphics subsystems only worked on high end specific architecture. I worked with them and they were awesome .. really awesome but no market existed outside of scientific or military ..

 

If you actually look back then there were hundreds (literally) of PC graphics card makers at the time ... since mostly gobbled up by NVIDIA and ATI ... in most cases simply to eliminate competition and/or gain IP.

Put simply, what did Nvidia or ATI ever invent? (Im sure they did a few things but mostly they aquired)

 

SGI on the other hand was innovative and into research... and since the machines were mainly used by people in research this was a nice combo. Pretty much the SGI's were to research establishments what Mac's were to design studios although like Mac (and unlike IBM) they also managed to make the things look pretty.

I think it all proves my ponit (well it's not my point but I agree with it). 8-10 years ago SGI was a profitable company a leader in high-end computer graphics. They should have started to make cheap consumer products (yeah it's easy to be smart now) this is what Apple is doing now. They had the know-how, an engeneering team and money to make it. Unlike many garage companies they shouldn't have to start from zero everything. OpenGL could be the leading graphics library. If they really start to make video chips\cards they have to fight with DirectX which everybody are using now.

Conclusion: no matter how first clas is what you are developing you have to sell it too.

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OpenGL could be the leading graphics library.
The problem OpenGL had for a while was it's sluggish development. DirectX was used by everyone because it had the best feature set, but that is quickly changing, thanks largely to 3DLabs and their addition of GLSL to OpenGL 2.0 (as well as future features that are already in the pipes).
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i'm wondering if they'll immediately resume pursuit of all their endeavors. for instance, will they continue to develop irix. that seems fruitless to me if they can manage with another *nix.

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I think it all proves my ponit (well it's not my point but I agree with it). 8-10 years ago SGI was a profitable company a leader in high-end computer graphics. They should have started to make cheap consumer products (yeah it's easy to be smart now) this is what Apple is doing now. They had the know-how, an engeneering team and money to make it.

Im not sure they did ... by which I mean they did of course have great engineers, they just didn't have the engineers to make cheap computer electronics.

Every SGI office I have been to has been full of really brainy people, most of whom don't give a toot about material stuff... and totally lack any "marketing" because they simply didn't need marketing ... if you wanted to run huge 3D visualisations you pretty much had to have a SGI.

Don't get me wrong Im sure these guys loved working with the toys they got... and I'd be willing to bet that's why they bought Cray... not so much for any rational reason so much as a few engineers saying "Whoah man that's cool" , lets buy Cray and we can play with supercomputers.

 

I think this more than anything put a death knell to their finances... especially since the SGI CPU's were and still are more or less the worst fpu performance per buck (even less than AMD or Intel)

If you compare fp perf then IBM are way way ahead.... then Sun anbd trailing at the back SGI.

If you compare graphics perf then its the inverse, SGI way ahead and Sun in the middle again and IBM looking worse than Wintel

 

A rather intresting factoid is that ATI were involved in all this, the Sun U5 and U10's Elite 3D being basically just a modified ATI ... and the Elite6 being a beefed up ATI and these are dirt cheap machines by Sun standards. A decent beefed up U10 5 yrs ago was probably about similar as a decent but not high end Intel machine right now using cheap off the shelf parts like IDE disks and the ATI graphics just on a real motherboard instead of the Intel/AMD unswitched (much cheaper) design. (64 bit arch, etc.) ...

But budget machines were just never in SGI's sphere of interest... and I would guess many of the best engineers would have left if the company started selling consumer stuff and gone on to design rockets or something.

 

Unlike many garage companies they shouldn't have to start from zero everything. OpenGL could be the leading graphics library. If they really start to make video chips\cards they have to fight with DirectX which everybody are using now.

Conclusion: no matter how first clas is what you are developing you have to sell it too.

 

Yep .. can't disagree but I just don't think that was the mentality in SGI....Its like the guys probably worked overtime everyday, loved their jobs etc. but getting them to think commercially ??

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I'm a big SGI fan too, there's a couple of octanes and a origin 2000 hanging around the office. Whilst they're pretty much useless for research these days I can't bring myself to throw them away!

 

In my professional life I'm a computational chemist and there's a UK wide working party that have just bought a new computer as a central resource. It's an SGI altix with 224 Itanium 2 cores, 896 GB of RAM and some silly number of TB of storage. Perhaps that's what's helped bring SGI back to life ;)

 

I really hope they survive.

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