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Technology Stocks : Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI)
SGI 94.00+1.1%Jan 16 3:59 PM EST

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To: Alexis Cousein who wrote (5561)1/13/1999 10:59:00 AM
From: Edward Smyth  Read Replies (1) of 14451
 
Alexis Cousein wrote
/* I'm pricing (at US list price) a

-320 chassis
-two PII-450, 512K SC.
-256 MB RAM
-32x CD-ROM
-9.1GB Ultra2 SCSI drive
-21" monitor

For a grand total of $7662, ... and is not even if
you bump up the memory to 512MB ($8862). */

Getting an SGI for this price is wonderful. I know I would much
prefer a properly designed system than the standard PC crap.
My only objection is the OS (i.e. NT). Now Linux would be fine
if it had all those IRIX extras (OpenGL, XFS etc), but could be
expensive for SGI to support (try getting ISVs to support optimized
ports for NT, Linux and IRIX!).

What I would really like to see are VW's with R12000 and IRIX.
This would be a vastly superior alternative to upgraded O2's.
If we take the price of $7662 above, replace the 2 P-IIs with
even just 1 R12000, subtract the cost of NT+added software and
add $650 for IRIX 6.5 (I believe this the price to buy a copy)
and we would still be talking about < $9000. R12000 CPUs can't
be that expensive. The processor bus would have to be redesigned
to fully support the R12000 of course but all other components
could be the same. The volume production advantages would
benefit both IRIX and NT customers.

So, dump the O2 and give O2 owners reasonable trade-in offers
(as the IRIX VW would now be the "upgrade" for O2s). A 540
with 2 R12000s could even replace the Octane, although if
the gap between this and the Onyx2 is too big, a quad processor
Octane could be required for the $20000-40000 market.

Maybe there is some fundamental engineering reason why R12000s
will not go into a VW, but I doubt it. It would require more
engineering effort than just putting an R12000 into an O2 but
the results would be so much better. The Unix workstation market
is now starting to increase in both unit sales and revenue and
it would be a shame if SGI didn't push IRIX more, given what
a wonderful OS it is.

Ed
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