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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: graphicsguru who wrote (243223)	11/2/2007 11:37:32 PM
From: chipguy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

SGI is selling Altix into non-HPC roles. A few big customers are using them to implement massive in-memory database and directory type systems with huge speed-ups. They view this as a competitive advantage so unfortunately for SGI they don't want it talked about. In general I don't think Altix is a threat to traditional big iron like Superdome because SGI is tiny and its finances relatively precarious compared to a supercorporation like HP. They, HP, don't just bring high end hardware to the table but also a massive global support organization, OSes, middleware, consulting services etc. Nevertheless SGI is actively pursuing many more commercial workload sales for Altix to expand sales and also diversify its customer base away from the feast and famine cycles of the HPC market. The biggest x86 machines are from IBM and Unisys, IIRC these top out at 32 sockets. The data I have seen suggests that not only is x86 a marginal presence in mid and high end servers but it has been losing ground in those segments over the past five years.