Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Green who wrote (9507)	11/2/2001 11:16:36 PM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 14451

Digital defense SGI summit to showcase technologies that can tackle terrorism Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, October 20, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle URL: sfgate.com SGI, the Mountain View company known for powerful computer graphics that can make dinosaurs come alive on the silver screen, began planning for its upcoming showcase of futuristic defense technology during the summer. But the company, once known as Silicon Graphics, said the attacks on Sept. 11 have given new urgency to its first SGI Defense Summit, a gathering that will bring together technology and defense companies with top U.S. military officials on Oct. 30 in Virginia. With the U.S. waging war on terrorism abroad and at home, the government is now more interested in certain defense technologies that it once considered too futuristic or may not even have known were available, said Graham Beasley, SGI's defense solutions marketing manager. For example, photographs of downtown San Francisco, taken by commercial satellites, can be turned into high-powered computer models used to simulate a terrorist attack or other disaster. This could help emergency service workers develop evacuation plans. "We can find the answers to a lot of 'what ifs,' " Beasley said yesterday. SGI is hosting the Defense Summit in Crystal City, Va., primarily to show eight top leaders from the branches of the Defense Department commercial technologies that they can use "in a new era of digital warfare," said Greg Slabodkin, an SGI spokesman. Also in the showcase will be defense industry stalwarts and SGI customers like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, along with Space Imaging, a privately held Thornton, Colo., company that sells images of the Earth taken from its own satellite orbiting 423 miles above the planet. The summit is an example of how Silicon Valley is gearing up to help the U. S. war effort. SGI has primarily been known for its expensive but powerful computer workstations. But a less-publicized 20 percent of its revenues have always come from government defense and intelligence agencies. After the Sept. 11 attacks, SGI has focused more of its "brain trust" behind helping the military and "what we can do for our home defense forces," Beasley said. The summit was planned to give military and government leaders an idea of the "off the shelf" products they could use, he said. SGI's flight-simulation technology, for example, can be combined with Space Imaging's photos to give fighter pilots a way to see what kind of terrain they may be flying over on a given mission. Photographs taken by Space Imaging's commercial satellite speeding along in orbit 423 miles above the earth and also be used to create precise maps downloaded digitally downloaded to the troops. "We can count the number of cars in a parking lot," Space Imaging spokesman Mark Brender said. "We can see a 4-inch white line painted on a dark parking lot pavement." Although military spy satellites are believed to be far more accurate, the government this week licensed Space Imaging's photos of Afghanistan. Ironically, Space Imaging began with the idea of selling technology developed by the military to private sector industries such as real estate, oil and insurance. Brender said his firm's Ikonos satellite, launched in 1999, is helping to augment the military's spy satellite network. And unlike classified spy satellite photos, images from Ikonos can be distributed freely to the country's allies "like candy," he said. "This technology can be used by the military for mission planning, battle damage assessment, contingency planning and refugee monitoring," he said.