Anonymous Coward writes "As part of its new restructuring SGI is spinning off its unprofitable NT workstation business and its Cray divisions. It will instead shift its Intel based products to Linux, integrating IRIX into Linux open-sourcing the merged technology, in preparation for using Intel platforms and Linux exclusively, according to Richard E. Belluzzo SGI CEO. " A lot of old news, but it's interesting to see that that they are spinning off the NT workstation business as well.

IBM will be joining the Trillian project to port Linux to Merced. The other members of Trillian are Intel, VA Linux Systems, SGI, Hewlett-Packard, and Cygnus Solutions. Linux will be shown running on a simulated Merced today at the Linuxworld conference.

the_demiurge writes "SGI has three press releases on their site showing the new Positions for the Future. They include making separate divisions for the Cray line and the Visual Workstations and also more details on the 'strategic alliance' with NVIDIA." SGI is also getting into Open Source in a big way. Check this page for all sorts of cool stuff.

We got a bunch of questions for Illiad (of User Friendly fame) Monday, let the Moderators (you know who you are) decide which of them were worthy, and sent the chosen ones off to the wilds of British Columbia. Here are Illiad's answers...

dewey writes "This article [from Yahoo! News] says that SGI is expected to announce another business restructuring next Tuesday. No details about the reorg yet, but the buzz is that the focus will be away from big customers buying high-end machines and more toward being better able to 'compete on the Web' -- whatever that means." Update: It may mean more Linux support; jho sent in a link to the new SGI Linux page. A ray of hope in SGI's otherwise gloomy future, perhaps?

Durinia writes "Here is the official press release from SGI about their new Linux server. It also looks like they've struck a deal with Red Hat. " SGI continues its support (and perhaps its last hope) with Linux-do you folks think this will be enough to restore them?

bpdlr (who admits to being a PC Week writer) sent us a story that proclaims that SGI Will Drop IRIX in exchange for some little no-name penguin oriented OS that nobody has heard of. I'm hearing rumors of a new Linux based mega server coming out of SGI, as well as some hugely scalable systems. Interesting stuff.

More details of SGI's upcoming Linux server have emerged. According to the article, SGI is already shipping a 4 processor machine, and plans to ship 8-way and 2-way machines at a later time. Both Linux and NT are available pre-installed. The servers look like they're not your mother's typical x86-based server, and come with some interesting hardware features that I didn't even know Linux supported (hot swap drives). Am I not well-informed, or is it possible SGI has some patches (that they're hopefully itching to give us)? Regardless, I'm glad to see a big Unix vendor shipping Linux, and touting it so highly.

Alowishus writes "Another nail in 3Dfx's coffin? NVIDIA and SGI team up - as a result, SGI drops their pending patent infringement suit and both companies swap patent portfolios. Press release is here. " I'm not really sure what to think of this - I can't see SGI giving technology to nVidia that would let us x86 users all have the same cards as their users...Is it just a way to get rid of the lawsuit? Maybe NVIDIA's manufacturing capabilities?

SGI just announced a Linux porting effort for IRIS Performer. Performer is an OpenGL-based scene graph library optimized for visual simulation; it's used in areas like military and commercial flight simulation, as well as the rides at DisneyQuest. Release is expected before the end of 1999. Performer is designed to drive the fastest graphics hardware and run the most demanding graphics apps in existence, so this is very good news.

Silly-G writes "SGI's free DevCentral web site features a story called "SGI Invests in OS Technology" that "updates information about recent developments" on SGI's four supported operating systems: Linux, IRIX, UNICOS and that other operating system. Perhaps nothing new is discussed but at least it's clearly described in one breath. Tons of interesting info including delivering intellectual property to the open source community, the upcoming IA-32 Linux server, the relationship with VA Linx Systems, the IA-64 Linux port, and the accelerated OpenGL graphics environment for Linux. "

Matt sent us the story over at SGI, officially confirming that they have worked with Number Nine to release the drivers for their uber-cool flat screen 1600SW into 3.3.3.1 of XFree86. The two will also be working more closely together in the future as well.

Reeses wrote in to send us linkage to a monitor that makes my SGI Screen look a little less sparkly. Mass Engineered Design Inc has screens that can be configured with 16 flat panels in on desktop. The Horizontal Triple has an aggregate resolution of 3072 x 768 and costs a mere (cough) $6500. They say solutions are available for various UNIXs but that don't specify. And then again, with all the multi-head stuff coming in XF86, it might not matter as much.

Caballero writes "This article on news.com says that SGI will be supporting Linux on their visual workstation products by the end of the year. " The real key is that while current workstations can boot Linux, they aren't really optimized for it. SGI is putting the effort in to let Linux shine on their hardware. We hope.

fremen writes "Yahoo has an article about VA Research starting a new round of fund raising. It mentions that it has gained funding from SGI among other companies. "

I've gotten a lot of mail, and seen this submitted - a porn site has sent mail using the Slashdot.org name, purporting to be Slashdot.org. They are not. We don't, and will not send mail out using your name. Click below for the full text of the message that was sent out. Update: 06/17 12:56 by H :Current going theory (thanks to Mark Rietman) is The list is the one maintained at distributed.net. This is because they used my distributed.net@rsoft.demon.nl adress (which i never use anywhere else). It's a list open to public (team stats-page --> memberslist) Update: 06/17 01:09 by CT : I just wanted to apologize. I'm getting a lot of hate mail, and I just want to reiterate that we didn't do this, and that I wish bad things would happen to the bastards who did this. I consider forging email to be among the worst of all net.crimes. And don't visit the site or you'll just encourage these pricks.

Yun Ye writes "Finally, a journaling FS for Linux! Get the full story . Excellent-we'll have to ask the SGI people about it tomorrow. And who came up with the name change. Whatever the case, this will help Linux continue to crack the high-end market.

Cornel Ciocîrlan writes "SGI announced yesterday that it will support Linux as its fourth operating system. The press release talks about contributions to the open-source community in the area of high-performance file systems, OpenGL, high-bandwidth I/O, compilers and other scalability features. "

TitanII writes "ZDNet News has an article about SGI switching to Linux. " The article itself talks about the switchover going on in many of the major tech firms-SGI isn't actually replacing Irix, but is making Linux a major offering across their platforms.

cybrthng writes "Well, according to some adds on linuxtoday and also via SGI's SGI Employment Opportunities Webpage You can search under technical/engineering jobs and sure enough they're looking for a few good men to develop linux for SGI :) " Nice to see them start to make a bigger play in the Linux arena. I'm hearing cool rumors from over there- let's hope they're better then the name change...