(SGI) is a company images.
Dr. ,
David J. Brown ,
Tom Davis ,
Rocky Rhodes , Marc Hannah,
Herb Kuta , and
Mark Grossman ;
Abbey Silverstone - a former manufacturing executive at
Xerox ; and a few others. The
Mayfield Fund Venture Capital group supplied the initial funding.
SGI's first generation products included the Integrated Raster Imaging System (
IRIS 1000 ) series of high-performance graphics terminals, based on the
Motorola 68000 Microprocessor with a
Motherboard design related to the
Sun-1 workstation, and incorporating a
Multibus and
Ethernet .
The first entries in the 1000 series (models 1000 and 1200, introduced in 1984) were graphics terminals, peripherals to be connected to a general-purpose computer such as a
Digital Equipment Corporation VAX , to provide graphical
Raster Display abilities. They used 8MHz Motorola 68000 CPUs with 768KB of RAM and had no
Disk Drive s; they booted over the network (via an
Excelan EXOS/101 ethernet card) from their controlling computer. They used the "PM1" CPU board, which was a variant of the
Stanford University "SUN" board that was the basis of the Sun-1 workstation. The graphics system was composed of the GF1
Frame Buffer , the UC3 "Update Controller", DC3 "Display Controller", and the BP2 bitplane.
Later 1000-series machines, the 1400 and 1500, ran at 10MHz and had 1.5MB of RAM. The 1400 had a 73MB
ST-506 disk drive, while the 1500 had a 474MB SMD-based disk drive. They may have used the PM2 CPU and PM2M1 RAM board from the 2000 series. The usual monitor for the 1000 series ran at 30Hz
Interlaced .
SGI rapidly evolved its machines into workstations with its second product line — the IRIS 2000 series. SGI began using the
UNIX System V Operating System . There were five models in two product ranges, the 2000/2200/2300/2400/2500 range which used
68010 CPUs (the PM2 CPU module), and the later "Turbo" systems, the 2300T, 2400T and 2500T, which had
68020's (the IP2 CPU module). All used the Excelan EXOS/201 ethernet card, the same graphics hardware (GF2 Frame Buffer, UC4 Update Controller, DC4 Display Controller, BP3 Bitplane). Their main differences were the CPU, RAM, and
Weitek Floating Point Accelerator boards, disk controllers and disk drives (both
ST-506 and
SMD were available). These could be upgraded, for example from a 2400 to a 2400T. The 2500 and 2500T had a larger chassis, a standard 6' 19" EIA rack with space for two 150 lb SMD disk drives at the bottom. The non-Turbo models used the
Multibus for the CPU to communicate with the floating point accelerator, while the Turbos added a ribbon cable dedicated for this. 60 Hz monitors were used for the 2000 series.
The height of the machines using Motorola CPUs was reached with the IRIS 3000 series (somewhere around 1989, models 3010/3020/3030 and 3110/3115/3120/3130, the 30's both being full-size rack machines). They used the same graphics subsystem and ethernet as the 2000's, but could also use up to 12 "geometry engines", the first widespread use of hardware graphics accelerators. The standard monitor was a 19" 60 Hz non-interlaced unit with a tilt/swivel base; 19" 30 Hz interlaced and a 15" 60 Hz non-interlaced (with tilt/swivel base) were also available.
The IRIS 3130 and its smaller siblings were impressive for the time, being complete
4.2BSD UNIX workstations. The 3130 was powerful enough to support a complete 3D animation and rendering package without mainframe support. With large capacity hard drives by standards of the day (two 300 MB drives), streaming tape and ethernet, it could be the centerpiece of an animation operation.
The line was formally discontinued in 1989, with about 3500 systems shipped of all 2000 and 3000 models combined.
With the introduction of the IRIS 4D series, SGI switched to using the
MIPS RISC microprocessor architecture. These machines were more powerful, able to address more memory and came with powerful on-board math capability. They made much of the SGI name, as 3D graphics became more popular on television and film.
SGI produced a broad range of MIPS-based workstations and servers during the 1990s, running SGI's version of UNIX System V, now called
IRIX . These included the massive Onyx visualization systems, the size of refrigerators and capable of supporting up to 64 processors while managing up to three streams of high resolution, fully realized 3D graphics.
In 1992, MIPS released the first
64-bit MIPS microprocessor, the R4000, which was the first commercially released 64-bit RISC microprocessor (a market soon joined by
Digital's Alpha chip and others). IRIX 6.2 was the first fully 64-bit IRIX release, including 64-bit pointers.
In August 2006, SGI announced the end of production for MIPS/IRIX systems
End of General Availability for MIPS® IRIX® Products at sgi.com.
. As of 29 December 2006, MIPS/IRIX products are no longer generally available from SGI.
Until the second generation Onyx Reality Engine machines, SGI offered access to its high performance 3D graphics subsystems through a proprietary
API known as ‘IRIS Graphics Language’ (
IRIS GL ). As more features were added over the years, IRIS GL became harder to maintain and cumbersome to use. In 1992, SGI decided to clean up and reform IRIS GL and made the bold move of allowing the resulting ''
OpenGL '' API to be cheaply licensed by SGI's competitors, and set up an industry-wide consortium to maintain the OpenGL standard (the OpenGL Architecture Review Board).
This meant that for the first time, fast, efficient, cross-platform graphics programs could be written. To this day, OpenGL remains the only real-time 3D graphics standard to be portable across a variety of operating systems. Its main competitor ('
Direct3D ' from Microsoft) runs only on
Microsoft Windows -based machines.
SGI was part of the early-90s
Advanced Computing Environment initiative with 20 others, including
Compaq ,
Digital Equipment Corporation ,
MIPS Computer Systems ,
Groupe Bull ,
Siemens ,
NEC ,
NeTpower ,
Microsoft and
Santa Cruz Operation to introduce workstations based on the
MIPS Architecture and able to run
Windows NT and
SCO UNIX . The group produced the
Advanced RISC Computing or ARC specification. The consortium fell apart, apparently for political reasons.
An SGI computer with the
FSN Three-dimensional file system navigator appeared in the 1993 movie ''
Jurassic Park ''. One hallmark of this scene is Lex's line, “This is a Unix system. I know this.”
In the movie ''
Twister '', the heroes can be seen using an SGI laptop, however the unit seen was not an actual working computer. An SGI monitor can be seen in the 2001 cyber thriller Swordfish while Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) compiles a hydra computer worm.
Once inexpensive PCs began to have graphics performance close to the more expensive specialized graphical workstations (which were SGI's core business), SGI concentrated on its high performance server capabilities, offering servers for
Digital Video and the Web. Many SGI graphics engineers have left to work at other computer graphics companies like
ATI and
NVIDIA , contributing to the PC 3D graphics revolution.
In response to these market changes, Silicon Graphics Inc. changed its corporate identity to “SGI” in an attempt to clarify their current market position as more than a graphics company, although its legal name was unchanged.
At the same time in 1999, SGI announced a new logo — simply the letters “sgi” in a stylized lowercase font and a proprietary typeface called “SGI”, created by branding and design consulting firm
Landor Associates , in collaboration with designer Joe Stitzlein. The new logo drew criticism for wasting the professional goodwill associated with the previous box-outline logo. SGI later re-adopted the cube logo, and now uses both logos.
