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The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

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346 points BirAdam | 1 comments | 05 Apr 24 16:42 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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tombert ◴[05 Apr 24 17:07 UTC] No.39944744[source]▶
There's a few cases in the history of computers where it feels like the world just "chose wrong". One example is the Amiga; the Amiga really was better than anything Apple or Microsoft/IBM was doing at the time, but for market-force reasons that depress me, Commodore isn't the "Apple" of today.

Similarly, it feels like Silicon Graphics is a case where they really should have become more standard. Now, unlike Amiga, they were too expensive to catch on with regular consumers, but I feel like they should have become and stayed the "standard" for workstation computers.

Irix was a really cool OS, and 4Dwm was pretty nice to use and play with. It makes me sad that they beaten by Apple.

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1. ip26 ◴[05 Apr 24 17:19 UTC] No.39944859[source]▶
We've seen again and again that the high end of the computer market can't sustain itself; the mass market outruns it. The result is that the high end works best when leveraging the mass market instead of trying to compete with it.

See the dominance of Threadripper in workstations, which is built on top of mainstream desktop and server parts bin. Or look at the Epyc based supercomputers, rumored to be the only supercomputers to turn a net profit for the suppliers, thanks to leveraging a lot of existing IP.