In a previous job at a University, we had a couple SGI big irons from the 1999-2002 era. A 64-way Origin 3800 and a 16-way Onyx 3800. Along with a similar vinta

In a previous job at a University, we had a couple SGI big irons from the 1999-2002 era. A 64-way Origin 3800 and a 16-way Onyx 3800. Along with a similar vintage SAN and some misc bits. When I left in 2010, eBay was the source of something like one replacement HDD per 10-14 days for the SAN (73GB dual-port fibre channel, full-height...) and the two machines (made of modular "bricks") had been whittled down to a single franken-SGI of something like 20 CPUs. Some of the older processing workload still ran on there (i.e.: the student graduated ages ago...) A few dual 5300-series (8 cores) Xeons had replaced the SGIs in most workloads and left the old 500Mhz R14000 far in the dust. Lots more RAM too. Let's not even get started on the advantage as far as HVAC and power went.