Justin,
Thank you for your well thought out reply.. now ;)
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
I do believe I said the MIPS would live on as a consumer product (didn't I.. cause if I didn't I meant to).
As for the OS itself, sure it's nice and yes it has the "64 bit advantage", but most of MS's NT code is "bit neutral" and could relatively easily be taken to 64 bit (I believe the NT filesystem is already 64 bit on Alpha's?)
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.
We have a lot of the same customers... trust me (we do high-end cad, cae, etc.). A lot of our customers are finding that for 9/10 of their needs, an x86 box does just as well.. I really think SGI made a smart move acknowledging the market and I can't wait to see an SGI openGL accelerated videocard on the general market (pass that one along to your bosses).
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.
While I understand what you are saying, I have never gone from 1 to 128 CPU's without a hitch. Mind you I have never tried it with SGI equipment, so maybe it's possible, but usually there is something in there.
MS's support of clustering isn't of it self as signficant as what it shows. It shows that MS is ready to get serious about the "big" server market.. and you must know as well as I do, Billy is driving the steam roller.
Steve |
