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But if the ex-SGI employees that started Nvidia have any sense, they'll stick to the consumer market to ensure no upstart can build an enterprise computing empi

by cdshn 2y ago

But if the ex-SGI employees that started Nvidia have any sense, they'll stick to the consumer market to ensure no upstart can build an enterprise computing empire off of gamers.

samstave 2y ago
Just a piece of history of SGI: When I went to school for Softimage in 1997 - my favorite thing was building with MetaClay -- I built an amazing Human Figure on an O2 SGI box -- and sadly I lost my dat backup years later - which I would have been able to bring into blender these days.... Metaclay in 1997 was unreal on SGI... Now its in the Alien that is Free Blender... (Softimage was[ $25,000 a license at the time](https://i.imgur.com/9gaeeQl.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/9gaeeQl.jpeg) - and an [SGI O2 was 15K and an Octane was 47K](https://i.imgur.com/aVQATfV.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/aVQATfV.jpeg) https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/sgi-hardware-and-software-price-lists-1995-1998.345/ https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/sgi-hardware-and-sof... --- So after going to school for 3D when it was only taught in 5 schools in the nation at the time - and you can see what a simple rig cost... I later spent $1,600 on an Evans and Sutherland 32MB Full-Length ATX video card that could handle OpenGL... and run NT and Softimage...
- cdshn 2y ago
  I have a Fuel with an SSD drive. Unfortunately it wont boot off of an SSD so I have to move everything to a network drive before the SCSI drives die. Meanwhile there are other ghosts in it that make it a lazy booter.
gregw2 2y ago
Ex-Sun guys started it actually. The SGI guys joined later.
- JonChesterfield 2y ago
  Sun was a treasure. Lots of the engineering leads at AMD have Sun on their CVs.
- cdshn 2y ago
  Wow, cool. Too late to edit, but I think the main point stands, the founders and early employees were all from giants with feet of clay who collapsed because they ignored the consumer market.
  - gregw2 2y ago
    I agree they effectively ignored the consumer market and died. But it wasn't because they didn't see it coming. It just is, in practice, hard for a billion dollar b2b company to embrace the consumer market even when they recognize it as an existential threat. For more what I mean by that, I wrote an SGI retrospective at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39960660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39960660 (Sun or SGI might have escaped if they'd merged with then-weak Apple/NeXT, but it's not clear if that would have helped Apple be more successful in hindsight.)

by cdshn 2y ago

But if the ex-SGI employees that started Nvidia have any sense, they'll stick to the consumer market to ensure no upstart can build an enterprise computing empire off of gamers.

samstave 2y ago

Just a piece of history of SGI: When I went to school for Softimage in 1997 - my favorite thing was building with MetaClay -- I built an amazing Human Figure on an O2 SGI box -- and sadly I lost my dat backup years later - which I would have been able to bring into blender these days.... Metaclay in 1997 was unreal on SGI... Now its in the Alien that is Free Blender... (Softimage was[ $25,000 a license at the time](https://i.imgur.com/9gaeeQl.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/9gaeeQl.jpeg) - and an [SGI O2 was 15K and an Octane was 47K](https://i.imgur.com/aVQATfV.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/aVQATfV.jpeg) https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/sgi-hardware-and-software-price-lists-1995-1998.345/ https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/sgi-hardware-and-sof... --- So after going to school for 3D when it was only taught in 5 schools in the nation at the time - and you can see what a simple rig cost... I later spent $1,600 on an Evans and Sutherland 32MB Full-Length ATX video card that could handle OpenGL... and run NT and Softimage...

cdshn 2y ago
I have a Fuel with an SSD drive. Unfortunately it wont boot off of an SSD so I have to move everything to a network drive before the SCSI drives die. Meanwhile there are other ghosts in it that make it a lazy booter.

gregw2 2y ago

Ex-Sun guys started it actually. The SGI guys joined later.

JonChesterfield 2y ago
Sun was a treasure. Lots of the engineering leads at AMD have Sun on their CVs.
cdshn 2y ago
Wow, cool. Too late to edit, but I think the main point stands, the founders and early employees were all from giants with feet of clay who collapsed because they ignored the consumer market.
- gregw2 2y ago
  I agree they effectively ignored the consumer market and died. But it wasn't because they didn't see it coming. It just is, in practice, hard for a billion dollar b2b company to embrace the consumer market even when they recognize it as an existential threat. For more what I mean by that, I wrote an SGI retrospective at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39960660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39960660 (Sun or SGI might have escaped if they'd merged with then-weak Apple/NeXT, but it's not clear if that would have helped Apple be more successful in hindsight.)