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: Alexis Cousein who wrote (5561)	1/13/1999 10:59:00 AM
From: Edward Smyth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to 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