|
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)
960-1980
1600
Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
www.sgi.com
Sales
$842
million
Business Description
SGI
is a leading provider of products, services and solutions for use in
high-performance computing, storage and visualization. We sell highly
scalable servers, advanced visualization systems, desktop workstations,
storage solutions and a range of software products which enable our
customers in the scientific, technical and creative communities to solve
their most challenging problems and provide them with strategic and
competitive advantages in their marketplace. We also offer a range of
services and solutions, including professional services, Reality Center®
immersive visualization centers, customer support and education. These
products and services are targeted primarily towards five market segments:
Government and Defense, Science, Manufacturing, Energy, and Media.
Products
SGI® systems are designed specifically to meet the needs of the scientific,
technical and creative marketplaces. SGI systems utilize either the IRIX®
operating system, which is a proprietary enhanced version of UNIX® based
upon the MIPS® RISC microprocessor, or the Linux® operating system based
upon Intel® Itanium® 2 microprocessors. Both the MIPS/IRIX and
Intel/Linux-based product lines feature our innovative SGI NUMA™
architecture and provide unique levels of performance and scalability to our
customers.
Scalable Servers The SGI Origin® family of high-performance servers includes
the Origin 3000 and Origin 300 series of systems. The Origin family of
servers features the SGI NUMA architecture and IRIX operating system, as
well as SGI® NUMAflex™, which allows customers to configure systems to meet
their unique needs by constructing systems of modular components or
"bricks". These bricks can be CPU, storage, or input/output ("I/O")
components, which can be configured independently within each system. The
modularity of the NUMAflex approach enables the computer system to meet the
exact requirements of the customer, while maintaining optimum flexibility in
meeting changing needs over time. The SGI® Altix™ 3000 family of
superclusters and servers also features the SGI NUMA architecture and is
based on the Linux operating system. Altix systems achieve high performance
through the combination of the proven NUMAflex approach, the flexibility of
open source computing and the power of up to 64 Itanium 2 processors in a
single node. Altix systems of up to 128 processors each can be clustered
together, a supercluster, to create supercomputers that are among the most
powerful in the world today.
Advanced Graphics Systems For more than 20 years, Silicon Graphics has been
synonymous with the most powerful and advanced computer graphics
capabilities in the industry. Today, the SGI® Onyx® family of products
continues that tradition, providing the greatest resolution, the most
realism and the highest levels of performance in the industry. The Onyx
family of systems is built on the same high-bandwidth SGI NUMA architecture
as the Origin and Altix servers and features our industry-leading SGI®
Onyx4™ UltimateVision™ graphics. Onyx series systems integrate
high-performance computing, data management, and high-performance
visualization into a single system.
SGI® Reality Center® environments are powered by SGI Onyx family systems and
enable groups of decision makers to visualize complex data in an interactive
manner. Customers around the world have used Reality Center environments to
increase production from oil reserves, design safer cars, interpret complex
scientific data and generally enable real-time decision support by immersing
decision-makers in high quality, high-resolution and interactive
environments.
Visual Area Networking In January 2002, SGI introduced a new concept called
Visual Area Networking that enables customers to access, manipulate and
visualize data over a standard network on their client computer using the
massive I/O, compute and real-time rendering capabilities of an SGI Onyx.
This means that individuals or teams can visualize data using "thin clients"
that would not normally be able to access or display such a large amount of
data. Visual Area Networking also facilitates collaboration between teams of
remote users, since all the data is located at a central point, but multiple
users can interactively manipulate and visualize the data. This new
technology is particularly applicable to oil and gas discovery,
manufacturing and defense applications.
Desktop Systems Our Silicon Graphics Fuel™ and Tezro™ families of MIPS
processor and IRIX operating system-based desktop workstations each feature
advanced 3D graphics and powerful integrated imaging capabilities. Silicon
Graphics Fuel workstations are cost-effective single-processor systems,
while the single-, dual- or quad-processor Tezro systems are targeted at
users who require advanced visualization capability and the most powerful
64-bit computing available in a desktop system.
SAN and Data Management Customers across the high-performance computing ("HPC")
markets desire ever increasing performance from their servers, creating a
parallel need to manage massive amounts of data generated by these servers.
To address the problem of managing such large amounts of complex data, SGI
has developed a series of products and solutions to help customers access
and utilize their data in a more efficient manner, resulting in better
workflow management, faster cycle times, and higher levels of access,
availability, and security.
SGI offers a broad range of disks and disk subsystems, ranging from
entry-level disk arrays to complex enterprise-class storage systems, in
either direct- or fabric-attached configurations. SGI offers storage area
network solutions based on tightly integrating our CXFS shared filesystem,
along with SGI's FailSafe® high-availability software and Data Migration
Facility ("DMF") for hierarchical storage management. SGI also offers
network-attached storage through a range of file-serving solution bundles.
Alias Our Alias subsidiary (formerly, Alias/Wavefront) develops
award-winning solutions for the film and video, game, interactive media,
industrial design, and visualization markets. These solutions, Maya®
software for the entertainment industry and Alias Studio™ tools for design,
give artists a distinct creative advantage, no matter what their discipline.
These industry-leading solutions run on the IRIX, Linux, Windows®, and
Macintosh® operating systems. Alias is based in Toronto, Canada, with sales
offices and distribution worldwide.
Competition
The computer industry is highly competitive and is known for rapid
technological advances. These advances result in frequent new product
introductions, short product life cycles and increased new product
capabilities, typically representing significant price/performance
improvements. The principal competitive factors for us are product features,
price/performance, product quality and reliability, ease of use,
capabilities of the system software, availability of third party
applications software, customer support, product availability, corporate
reputation and price. Significant discounting from list price has been the
norm in the industry.
Our principal competitors are IBM,
Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Cray,
Sun Microsystems and, in some
markets, Dell. Our unique market focus on technical
and creative users provides advantages in being able to design our systems
specifically for these users. Our competitors, however, are generally far
larger companies with much greater resources. As our Linux-based systems
business grows, the list of competitors may grow commensurate with the
increased market opportunity. Specifically, Dell and other PC vendors market
products that can be clustered together to produce systems that may compete
with our mid-range products.
Ticker
SGI
Servers - Category Main Page
Workstations - Category Main Page
Workstation Companies in the Directory
Silicon Graphics
Sun Microsystems
|
|
