SGI

▪ American company

Introduction

abbreviation of  Silicon Graphics, Inc. 

      American manufacturer of high-performance computer workstations, supercomputers, and advanced graphics software with headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Founding of SGI

      Silicon Graphics, Inc., was founded in 1982 by James Clark, an electrical-engineering professor at Stanford University who had identified a need for desktop computers to be able to display graphic images quickly and in three-dimensional detail—something previously possible only on multimillion-dollar supercomputers. The primary users of these computers were expected to be scientists and engineers developing elaborate 3-D software for corporate and military research and development. Although both these markets did indeed embrace SGI's products, the biggest opportunity turned out to be a surprise.

Hollywood animation

      The first prototype of SGI's computer workstation was given free of charge in 1984 to George Lucas (Lucas, George), the creator of the Star Wars series of movies. From this small step, SGI emerged as Hollywood's favourite computer supplier. In traditional animation, realistic effects were achieved by the painstaking alteration of drawings or models for each frame of film—a very labour-intensive process. Today, most animation and special effects are created inside “virtual worlds,” where computers automate much of the work. SGI's computers have been instrumental in this transition, producing special effects for some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters, as well as for music videos and television advertisements. In 1995 the first feature-length animated movie to be entirely computer-generated, Walt Disney Co.'s Toy Story, was created with SGI's computers.

High-end computer graphics consolidation

      In 1986 SGI became a public company. The following year it introduced its first UNIX workstation using reduced-instruction-set computing (RISC) microprocessors, the most advanced computer chips available. In the 1990s it began a series of acquisitions to strengthen its position as the leading provider of high-performance computer graphics systems. In 1992 it purchased MIPS Computer Systems, which designed SGI's RISC microprocessors. In 1995 it merged with the two leading software companies in its market, Alias Research and Wavefront Technologies. The following year it paid $767 million to acquire Cray Research, Inc., a Minneapolis-based supercomputer maker. As the owner of Cray, SGI found itself operating in a rapidly declining market as defense contractors and petrochemical companies, two of Cray's major customers, slashed their research and development budgets. The media and entertainment industries, which claimed approximately half of SGI's business, showed little interest in expensive supercomputers.

Company reorganization

      Meanwhile, SGI experienced difficulties in retaining its top executives. Clark left in 1994 to found Mosaic (now Netscape (Netscape Communications Corp.)) Communications Corp., an Internet software company (which itself was purchased in 1999 by America Online), and SGI president Thomas Jermoluk resigned to help found Home Network, another Internet-related company. Distracted by such turnover at the top, SGI missed the initial business boom of selling servers in the fast-growing Internet market. Unable to sell servers running their proprietary IRIX operating system or compete with more general-purpose UNIX computer companies such as Digital Equipment Corp., the Hewlett-Packard Company, and Sun Microsystems, Inc. SGI began to lose money in 1997.

      In response, SGI's management radically altered the company's business strategy to appeal to large organizations running more traditional software, especially large databases and Internet applications, by signing deals with Microsoft Corporation and Intel Corporation to market workstations running Windows NT, a competing operating system to UNIX, on Intel microprocessors. Moreover, in 1998 SGI reorganized its chip division, MIPS Technologies, Inc.—primarily known for manufacturing the Nintendo Co.'s N64 processor—as an independent business.

Mark Hall

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