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And here I've been completely oblivious that SGI was still a company all these years. (I guess it's not the same SGI, but still)
by Steeeve 10y ago
And here I've been completely oblivious that SGI was still a company all these years. (I guess it's not the same SGI, but still)
- bsharitt 10y agoI did HPC work for the DoD a couple of years ago and a good chunk of our supercomputers were from SGI.
- acveilleux 10y agoThe supercomputer Cray/SGI business was the only surviving bit and basically DoD and other TLAs are the only buyers. I suspect it's mostly the Cray networking topologies (T3D/T3E double-taurus with 2048+ cpus) that kept them relevant. The processors were just plain alphas and later Xeons I think.
- lallysingh 10y agoMIPS then Xeons.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nickpsecurity 10y agoMIPS then Itanium then Xeons. A lot of companies rode the Itanic because it looked so high-class. One, good result is you can get an Itanium server on ebay for about $120 if it's a small SGI. I kind of smiled and winced when I noticed that trend.
- mbreese 10y agoThose were likely former Rackable Systems clusters, which bought and renamed itself SGI. Sadly, I think that all that's left of the old SGI is the name. Even the HPC magic they had I believe originally came from Cray -- another name from a bygone era.
- rbanffy 10y agoCray still builds fairly impressive single-image Limux machines. Not as pretty as their forerunners, but impressive on their own.
- mbreese 10y agoYou're right... I was thinking back to 2000's SGI. It's hard to track of when / where these companies are. SGI buys Cray, SGI spins Cray out to Tera, Rackable buys SGI, HP splits, HPE buys SGI... It's all crazy. But yes, Cray still has some impressive gear independently.
- pinewurst 10y agoThey are for sure not single image machines. Each node is running its own kernel, sees only its own resources and is scheduled by the system-wide batch scheduler node. Running across nodes requires MPI to tie things together (tenuously) at the application level. If they are impressive, it's only because of physical size and aggregate resources available, not because there's the least bit of magic involved. It's the usual Intel+-NVidia CPUs/chipsets/etc. At the current time, it's mostly their legacy proprietary interconnect.
- rbanffy 10y agoCould I have confused those with, oh the irony, some SGI machine? I remember someone had single-image boxes with up to a thousand CPUs. I assumed it was something derived from Cray's T3E.
- tonylemesmer 10y agoI know - and still reasonably valuable
- anoother 10y agoThis comment (on my favourite SGI enthusiast forum) might explain why: http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16730962&start=15#p7392496 http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16730962&star...
- rbanffy 10y agoI like the fact VMS is still supported.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoSupported by who? SGI's Itanium boxes or HP after acquisition?
- rbanffy 10y agoThere is an x86 Port effort going on.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoYeah, it's through an outside company they licensed it to after killing it. That's the good news. The bad news is it was a tough port the other times, not a big market, and who knows what cut they get. I hope the company pulls it off but it's a tall order. Only the start of what needs to be done to get OpenVMS competitive, esp on usability.
- mrweasel 10y agoI think some company bought SGI after a bankruptcy and the renamed itself SGI. Sort like what happened to Cray.
- rbanffy 10y agoRackable.
- sevensor 10y agoLikewise! I learned Iris GL on an SGI, back in the day. I thought SGI had been ground to a fine powder and snorted by Larry Ellison, but it turns out that's not the case.
- cmrdporcupine 10y agoSounds like SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc) went bankrupt April 2009. The name and assets were then bought by Rackable, who then adopted the name SGI (Silicon Graphics International).
- nickpsecurity 10y agoExactly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics,_Inc.