This may not be news to anyone but a few geeks out there but it definitely hit me when I found out. Silicon Graphics (SGI) has filed for Chapter 11.
During the 90's, SGI was the KING of graphics. Their visual workstations topped 100k, but it was worth it because they were years if not decades ahead of ordinary PC's. At the height of their empire, they provided visualization machines for government, military, medical, research, animation, and even gaming applications. In fact, they had a huge hand in designing the graphics chip inside the Nintendo 64. As a kid growing up, I could only dream my poor little 100 MHz Mac could produce 3D graphics and often fantasized about getting my grubby hands on an SGI workstation.
Fast forward to 2006 and the company is so bankrupt, they had to file for Chapter 11 protection. So what happened? I don't know the logistics behind the decision but I already know SGI's premium cost for hardware combined with the fact that you can now easily get an equivalent Mac or PC for tens of thousands less, placed them in a position where they either had to leap frog current computers, or dramatically cut back costs in order to survive. I guess it was too little too late.
My heart goes out to the small company since I know they have very talented people there. I've always felt they should have targeted the education sector and subsidize their costs to get schools to use their hardware and software. People usually like to keep using what they learned with. If you can't play with the big dogs, you have to expand your market or die a slow death.
Leave a comment