Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (Originally Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, often called SGI) was a company that made graphical workstation computers, high-performance computing servers, and graphics processing units. It was founded by Jim Clark in 1981 in Mountain View, California.

Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Company type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: SGI Template:OTC Pink was NASDAQ: SGIC
Industry	Computer hardware and software
Founded	November 9, 1981; 44 years ago (1981-11-09) Mountain View, California, U.S.[1]
Defunct	May 11, 2009; 16 years ago (2009-05-11)
Fate	Chapter 11 bankruptcy; assets acquired by Rackable Systems, which renamed itself Silicon Graphics International Corp.
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, California, U.S.
Key people	Jim Clark Wei Yen Kurt Akeley Ed McCracken Thomas Jermoluk Marc Hannah Rick Belluzzo
Products	High-performance computing, visualization and storage

It is important to the history of the MIPS processor architecture, UNIX (through their own UNIX product, IRIX) and later, Linux.

History

In the 1980s Silicon Graphics sold graphics terminals (a type of computer that provides graphics for a server) based on the Multibus architecture used by early Sun Microsystems computers. Later, these computers, called the IRIS series, became standalone computers running an operating system known as GL2.^[2]

After acquiring MIPS Computer Systems and the MIPS architecture rights, SGI moved to producing the Professional and Personal IRIS lines based on the MIPS R2000 and R3000 processors.^[3] These ran an operating system known as IRIX which continued active development and support until 2006.

SGI continued to develop the MIPS architecture and released many new computers based on the MIPS architecture and their custom graphics cards. By 1998 however a series of bad business decisions by then CEO Rick Belluzzo led to them losing money and they joined the Itanium alliance, which failed to deliver and cost SGI further money.

By 2006, the MIPS R10000 product line had been extended all the way to the R16000 version, but was more expensive and slower than competing Intel X64, IBM POWER, and Itanium products. This combined with bankruptcy led SGI to change to Itanium products under the Altix product line.^[4][5] But by 2009, they were acquired by Rackable Systems which named themselves Silicon Graphics International.