Steve -
let's be realistic here (I'm trying to be). I honestly believe that SGI is going to slowly phase out UNIX as NT (5.0) becomes more powerful. Microsoft has already announced that they will be adding clustering.
Clustering is one thing, truly scaleable SMP is quite another. That (and 64bit) is one of our biggest advantages right now. Pay as you grow from 1 processor to 128 with no surprises, no obsolescence, and a single system memory image all the way. NT is years and years and years away from offering this. A single or maybe dual proc. NT desktop system makes a good interface to our bigger boxes, but it's certainly not a replacement for Unix.
It may well take 5 - 8 years to completely phase out Unix, but the first blow has been dealt. SGI is also going to be using Intel processors in their new machines..
We have some customers that don't need Unix or MIPS capability on the desktop to interface with our larger machines. We'd like to get their computer system dollars. By offering them a 'one stop shopping experience', I think we can. Bear in mind, though, that the real work is, and will be for quite some time, being done on Unix/MIPS.
I think SGI is starting to dislike the r&d costs of maintaining their own os and hardware
What do you know of our business model? We can subsidize the production of high tech. CPUs by making products for the consumer space (N64, digital cameras, settop boxes, etc). The r&d costs of maintaining our own OS has brought us billions of $$, because we're the only ones in the industry with binary compatibility from desktops to teraflops, the first with a 64bit journaled filesystem, the first with S2MP, etc. etc. etc. We didn't get these things for free, but they've made us lots of $$, and we wouldn't ever have gottem them from INTC/MSFT.
*All opinions mine only, not SGIs*
-justinb |
