Intel Investors - SGI is getting Closer to Shipping Intel Workstations
Paul
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news.com
Silicon Graphics scraps
MIPS plans
By Michael Kanellos and Dawn Yoshitake
Staff Writers, CNET NEWS.COM
April 9, 1998, 12:40 p.m. PT
Silicon Graphics (SGI) has quietly scrapped
ambitious plans for its MIPS processors and
is now following a much more limited road
map calling for fewer design improvements,
according to sources close to SGI.
The last major MIPS release for servers and
workstations is scheduled for 1999, sources
said. SGI will
continue to boost
processor speeds
and incorporate the
chip in its high-end
computers, but will
likely start the
phasing out the
processor in 2001 as
64-bit chips from Intel
become more
pervasive and
powerful.
The shift in plans results from a variety of
economic and technological pressures. SGI
has seen sales and profits drop in the past
few years as sales of Windows-Intel
workstation computers have climbed. The
slide has made it more difficult to support the
MIPS platform, according to analysts.
But SGI's scaling back of MIPS processor
projects also reflects the fact that SGI has
already seen the writing on the wall,
according to sources close to the company
who are familiar with the revamped efforts. At
press time, SGI could not be reached for
comment regarding future MIPS chip
projects.
SGI publicly makes no bones about its plans
for an aggressive push into the
Windows-Intel workstation market. Later this
year, SGI will start making Windows-Intel
workstations based around the
next-generation "Slot 2" Pentium II processor
and Microsoft's Windows NT operating
system.
Since SGI plans to eventually use Intel's
powerful next-generation 64-bit Merced chip
coming in 1999, the company has apparently
decided it was better to switch to Intel than
fight. (Intel is an investor in CNET: The
Computer Network.)
The move away from MIPS will be a
milestone for Silicon Graphics. Until recently,
SGI and Sun were the last two major
enterprise computing vendors to exclusively
use their own chips and operating systems.
Last year, both companies entered into
limited alliances to port their products to the
Intel platform. SGI also cut a development
deal with Microsoft.
Shifting to the Windows-Intel technologies
removes development difficulties for SGI but
also potentially weakens a competitive
advantage. At the same time, the
phasing-out of MIPS at the high end could
endanger the chip platform's life in handheld
computers.
Capitan, one of the terminated high-end
processors, "was canceled when it became
clear that SGI was moving to the 'Wintel'
camp," a source close to the company said.
SGI also fell behind on its development
schedule. Under a plan announced in May
1997, SGI said it would release in 1998 a
chip called the R12000, a 64-bit processor
running at 300 MHz using the same socket
structure as the current R10000 chip.
The R12000 was to be followed by a chip
code-named H1, slated for the first half of
1999, which in turn would have been
succeeded by the H2. Both were to contain a
new chip architecture aimed at improving the
speed at which the processor communicates
with main memory.
The R12000 is still due for the middle of the
year. However, both the H1 (code-named
Beast) and the H2 (code-named Capitan)
have been ditched, said sources inside and
close to SGI. Instead, SGI will release a chip
in 1999 called the R14000, which will
essentially be a 400-MHz version of the
R12000 made on an advanced production
process.
Even with the scaled-down road map, MIPS
does not have a long life. There are no
planned successors to the R14000,
according to sources. To keep chip
designers from prematurely jumping ship,
SGI has given team members pay raises of
close to 50 percent and promised bonuses
equivalent to a full year's salary if
performance goals under the new plans are
met, said a source.
Economically, a decision to move toward
Intel processors makes sense because SGI
is in a bind, said Peter ffoulkes, workstation
analyst for Dataquest. SGI has already made
the decision to make Wintel boxes, he
pointed out, and supporting both the Intel and
MIPS platforms would result in an arduous
drain of resources--especially in light of their
recent sales problems.
"At this point in time, I question whether they
can sustain [both] a MIPS-based architecture
and an Intel architecture [at the same time],"
ffoulkes said.
But the conversion will not occur overnight,
said Stephen Dube, an analyst with
Wasserstein Parella Securities. SGI will have
to continue to support its Unix-MIPS
customers to maintain revenues. Meanwhile,
Merced and Windows NT 5.0 remain
untested and are not likely to match the
performance of Unix systems, making an
early, wholesale switch counterproductive.
"They will be working on MIPS for some time.
You cannot dead-end customers," he said.
"They are going to the Intel platform, but they
have customers on the Unix platform."
Intel-based products from SGI should start
coming out this year, focused on the low end
of the market. An overview published by The
Microprocessor Report newsletter in January
states that SGI will manufacture low-end
Intel-based desktops in the second half of
this year and follow with workstations based
on the Merced chip in 1999.
A complete transition away from MIPS is
likely contingent on a number of factors,
according to sources close to SGI. "2001 is
probably the crucial year," the source said. |
