[geeks] New SGI workstation

[Eric Dittman]

> > "The new system should serve this niche well and help pay the bills as
> > the company transitions to Intel's Itanic processor."
> > 
> > Is this the raw fact? Are they really moving away from IRIX+Mips, that
> > once made them unique? I hope SOMEONE over there can think longer than
> > his nose, cause the Altix is Just Another PeeCee(tm).
> > 
> 
> That's apparently a true statement.  Unofficial word is that SGI wants to do
> the Itanic thing and dump MIPS.  However, I don't know that I fully believe
> it.  Rumor is that they also are going to stop developement of Irix.  I
> *really* hope that's false - but SGI's management has made some rather
> assinine decisions in the past, so anything is possible.

NSK is migrating from MIPS to Itanium.  That would leave SGI as the only
company using MIPS CPUs for their servers and workstations.  It may be that
continuing development of the high-end of the MIPS processor line may be
cost prohibitive with only SGI using them.

Another large (the largest, I think) consumer of MIPS CPUs is also migrating
to a different architecture:  Sony.  The Playstation 3 is supposed to use a
custom CPU.
-- 
Eric Dittman
dittman at dittman.net