SGI produced a number of products that used Cosmo3D.

Set Engineering produced one such fast Ethernet card, based on the Texas Instruments ThunderLAN chipset, under contract with SGI.

ARCS is a firmware bootloader ( also known as a PROM console ) used in most computers produced by SGI since the beginning of the 1990s.

Hardware implementations of the geometry pipeline were introduced in the early Evans & Sutherland Picture System, but perhaps received broader recognition when later applied in the broad range of graphics systems products introduced by Silicon Graphics ( SGI ).

Further, SGI's premature announcement of its migration from MIPS to Itanium and its abortive ventures into IA-32 architecture systems ( the Visual Workstation line, the ex-Intergraph Zx10 range and the SGI 1000-series Linux servers ) damaged SGI's credibility in the market.

In April 2008, SGI re-entered the visualization market with the SGI Virtu range of visualization servers and workstations, which were re-badged systems from BOXX Technologies based on Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron processors and Nvidia Quadro graphics chipsets, running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Windows Compute Cluster Server.

Meanwhile DARPA's VLSI Project created several spinoff graphics products as well, notably the SGI 3130, and Silicon Graphics ' range of machines that followed.

It was similar to other SGI IRIS 4D deskside workstations, and could utilise a wide range of graphics options ( up to RealityEngine ).

* SGI Origin 200, a series of entry-level MIPS-based server computers made by Silicon Graphics

* SGI Origin 2000, a series of mid-range to high-end MIPS-based server computers made by Silicon Graphics

* SGI Origin 3000, a series of mid-range to high-end MIPS-based server computers made by Silicon Graphics that succeeded the Origin 2000

Another attempt by SGI in the late 1990s to introduce its own family of Intel-based workstations running Windows NT ( see also SGI Visual Workstation ) proved to be a financial disaster, and shook customer confidence in SGI ’ s commitment to its own MIPS-based line.

However, around 1990, the existing MIPS-based systems ( such as the TURBOchannel-equipped DECstation or the SGI Indigo ) varied drastically from standard Intel personal computers such as the IBM AT — for example, neither used the ISA bus so common in Intel 386-class machines.

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. ( SGI ) to run natively on their MIPS architecture workstations and servers.

Although some Itanium-based workstations were initially introduced by companies such as SGI, they are no longer available.

Silicon Graphics ( SGI ) refocused its business from desktop graphics workstations to the high-performance computing market in the early 1990s.

In the mid-1990s, a major use of non-embedded MIPS microprocessors were graphics workstations from SGI.

By the early 1990s, Silicon Graphics ( SGI ) was a leader in 3D graphics for workstations.

SGI rapidly evolved its machines into workstations with its second product line — the IRIS 2000 series, first released in August, 1985.

Once inexpensive PCs began to have graphics performance close to the more expensive specialized graphical workstations which were SGI's core business, SGI shifted its focus to high performance servers for digital video and the Web.

In September 2000, SGI acquired the Zx10 series of Windows workstations and servers from Intergraph Computer Systems ( for a rumored $ 100 million ).

The rise of cheap yet powerful commodity workstations running Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, and the availability of diverse professional software for them, effectively pushed SGI out of the visual effects industry in all but the most niche markets, as studios adopted newer, cheaper technology.

* SGI IRIS, a line of computer terminals and workstations

It initially ran on workstations from Sun Microsystems and Apollo Computers, but later ported its software to workstations made by Digital Equipment Corporation, HP, IBM and SGI, and later still, to the Apple Macintosh II and the IBM Personal Computer.

It did require that applications be recompiled —- which most developers didn't do —- still, its hardware independence was used for Silicon Graphics ( SGI ) x86 workstations – thanks to NT's Hardware abstraction layer ( HAL ), they could operate NT ( and its vast application library ).

This was often the X Window System, and in this form Display PostScript was later adopted by companies such as IBM and SGI for their workstations.

It was not uncommon to differentiate the target market for the products, with Sun and Apollo considered to be network workstations, while the SGI machines were graphics workstations.

For this reason, almost no workstations are built by the customer themselves but rather purchased from a vendor such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun Microsystems, SGI, Apple, or Dell.

* SGI ended general availability of its MIPS based SGI Fuel and SGI Tezro workstations in December, 2006.

The addition of 3D graphic capabilities to PCs, and the ability of clusters of Linux-and BSD-based PCs to take on many of the tasks of larger SGI servers, ate into SGI's core markets.

SGI continued to enhance its line of servers ( including some supercomputers ) based on the SN architecture.

A typical XFS user site, NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, takes advantage of these capabilities, deploying two 300 + terabyte XFS filesystems on two SGI Altix archival storage servers, each direct attached to multiple fiber channel disk arrays.

Examples of ccNUMA enabled chipsets are the SGI Shub ( Super hub ), the Intel E8870, the HP sx2000 ( used in the Integrity and Superdome servers ), and those found in recent NEC Itanium-based systems.

This was a great strategic mistake by SGI, as Cray were developing the Starfire system at the time, this being launched by Sun as the very successful Ultra Enterprise 10000 multiprocessor servers.

Category: SGI servers

Mark Kilgard wrote and released many OpenGL technical sample programs during the pushback against Microsoft's competitive FUD against the API, and his GLUT toolkit ( ported to Windows by Nate Robins ) allowed these examples to run cross platform on Windows PC systems as well as SGI workstations.

In the late 1990s, when much of the industry expected the Itanium to replace both CISC and RISC architectures in non-embedded computers, SGI announced their intent to phase out MIPS in their systems.

SGI was part of the Advanced Computing Environment initiative, formed in the early 1990s with 20 other companies, including Compaq, Digital Equipment Corporation, MIPS Computer Systems, Groupe Bull, Siemens, NEC, NeTpower, Microsoft and Santa Cruz Operation.

By the mid 1990s, public clusters consisted of the Solaris operating system on SPARC hardware from Sun Microsystems, and the IRIX operating system on MIPS hardware from Silicon Graphics, Inc. ( SGI ).

The IRIS Crimson, code named Diehard2, is a Silicon Graphics ( SGI ) computer released in the early 1990s.

Although the G364 was capable of providing comparatively high resolution output ( up to 1600 × 1200 pixels at 8 bits-per-pixel, in many cases ) typically achieved only in Unix workstations such as those of Sun Microsystems or SGI, it was not a popular chipset for the personal computer manufacturers of the early 1990s and was not adopted by any major workstation manufacturers.

* SGI IRIX-using the LV, XLV and later XVM volume managers ( 1990s and onwards )

PowerAnimator ran natively on MIPS based SGI IRIX and IBM AIX systems up until the late 1990s when it was superseded by Maya.

* Alias Animator and PowerAnimator were high-end 3D packages in the 1990s, running on Silicon Graphics ( SGI ) workstations.