Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 7th Feb 2009 10:20 UTC
If there is one company out there that embodies "former glory", it just has to be Silicon Graphics Incorporated. Once one of the most well-respected high-performance computer and software makers of the world, it is now a mere shadow of its former self. The most recent set of financial results from the company do not bode well for the already troubled company.
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Member since:2005-07-07
I think that droping IRIX and MIPS was the worst decisicion ever made.Without them, SGI is no more than another linux dealer
What exactly did they gain with IRIX and MIPS? Nothing really, except uneeded expenses. You should check out their business now it is a lot more than just a Linux dealer. They offer products that you can't get anywhere else.
RE[2]: Comment by Fransexy
by fithisux on Sun 8th Feb 2009 10:45
in reply to "RE: Comment by Fransexy"
Member since:2006-01-22
What exactly did they gain with IRIX and MIPS? Nothing really, except uneeded expenses. You should check out their business now it is a lot more than just a Linux dealer. They offer products that you can't get anywhere else.
OK we should all use windows according to your line of thought. I believe they should have been commited on IRIX and on MIPS and push it to the desktop (ala microsoft). Instead they used the flawed economic model that consumers are idiots who pay whatever you sell them in the price you sell. This shows disrespect to customers. Now with Loongson, IRIX can have a chance on netbooks but they do not care which means no advertsing, do you see SUN's race to support AcerAspire One? This is a big company, bigger than Microsoft.
Member since:2005-11-10
It doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out that (by the end of MIPS run) selling a processor that is one order of magnitude slower than your competitor and four times as expensive... is not a good business plan.
SGI always had an awful management, and their transition from MIPS to IA64 was an example of what not to do. As in, do not announce you are going to move to your competitors' processor (which is still vaporware) while you still depend on at least 3 more years of revenue on your current platform to survive.
The biggest blunder may have been the complete disregard (and sometimes it seemed downright hostility) that SGI had for the commodity desktop/consumer 3D market.
RE[2]: Comment by Fransexy
by Dubhthach on Mon 9th Feb 2009 16:53
in reply to "RE: Comment by Fransexy"
Member since:2006-01-12
I recall when they brought out the 800mhz R16k that it's specint/specfp scores were about half of those for a P4 running at 3.2Ghz so basically getting twice the work done per clock. The problem of course in sense was that SGI were never gonna ramp clock speed right up.
Their high density Origin3900 put 16 chips in one 4u/5u "Brick" this was only viable cause the chips only used 25W a piece. When you recall how much the P4 basically used that some difference in power usage.
The other problem I think in some ways were the processors didn't include built in L2 cache. 16MB cache on Tezro was great but latency/performance would have been better if it was integrated in the chip.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2005-07-29
I think that droping IRIX and MIPS was the worst decisicion ever made.Without them, SGI is no more than another linux dealer