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The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

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346 points BirAdam | 7 comments | 05 Apr 24 16:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.287s | source | bottom
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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. jandrese ◴[05 Apr 24 17:52 UTC] No.39945191[source]▶
SGI dug their own grave. Not only were the workstations expensive, but they demanded outrageously priced support contracts. This behavior drives people nuts and will insure that the switch to a competitor the instant it becomes an option. Despite the high cost, the support contracts had a pretty lousy reputation as well, with long wait times for repairs from a handful of overworked techs. Even worse is the company turned away from its core competencies to focus on being an also-ran in the PC workstation market.

There was a window in the mid-90s where it would have been possible for SGI to develop a PC 3D accelerator for the consumer market using their GE technology, but nobody in the C-Suite had the stomach to make a new product that would undercut the enormous profit margins on their core product. It's the classic corporate trap. Missing out on the next big thing because you can't see past next quarter's numbers. Imagine basically an N64 on a PCI card for $150 in 1996. The launch versions could be bundled with a fully accelerated version of Quake. The market would have exploded.

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2. grumpyprole ◴[05 Apr 24 18:04 UTC] No.39945287[source]▶
> The market would have exploded

Absolutely, they could have been where Nvidia is now!

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3. christkv ◴[05 Apr 24 18:07 UTC] No.39945313[source]▶
Or they could have 3dfxed themselves.
4. Keyframe ◴[05 Apr 24 18:11 UTC] No.39945345[source]▶
I'd argue Nvidia is ex-SGI, and so is ex-ATI. It's all their crew in the beginnings.
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5. foobarian ◴[05 Apr 24 18:29 UTC] No.39945516{3}[source]▶
I wish we could have a debugging view of the universe, draw a diagram with clusters of people labeled with company names, and watch them change over time. :-)
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6. jmtulloss ◴[05 Apr 24 19:14 UTC] No.39945986{4}[source]▶
This view would certainly explain to people outside of Silicon Valley/ SF why the Bay Area has been so dominant in our industry for so many years.
7. cduzz ◴[05 Apr 24 21:48 UTC] No.39947657[source]▶
Ugh.

Worked at a university in the early 90s.

Maybe irix was okay to use if you were just sitting in front of it doing rando user / graphics things, but administering it was unbearable. The license fees to get OS updates were exorbitant; you'd have to get wacky new licenses to enable NFS or NIS and you'd need new kernels for just about anything.

As far as I could tell they were a cursed company that hated their users. "Here's a pretty thing that does one thing well but is otherwise insane and will ruin you when you need it most."

Good riddance.