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ColdStream | on: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
And yet again I am reminded of how SGI was so far ahead of the graphics game and yet was absolutely demolished because others could see the potential for domestic add-on cards when SGI was focusing on entire work stations.

3DFX and Nvidia ultimately put them out of business.

corysama | parent | next
I’m not a scholar of the fall of SGI. But, I’m sure it has been documented in detail.

AFAICT, SGI was a textbook Innovator’s Dilemma case with an expensive enterprise product that’s hard to give up in the face of cheap, low-margin competition.

JSR_FDED | root | parent | next
This is true. I was at SGI, and their entire business was optimized to serving the needs of very sophisticated customers who were themselves pushing the envelope. Absolutely great customers to work with. But SGI’s DNA couldn’t adjust to the low margin high volume consumer space.

They built an incredible Windows NT system (for the time) but couldn’t keep up with the 6 month release cycle their competitors were on.

SGI was an incredible place to work while it lasted.

ColdStream | root | parent
Spot on. They had the tech advantages but the high margins of full work stations blinded them to the changing winds in the industry.

I remember at the time seeing some folks blown away that they could do SGI like stuff on a PC with a $199 add on card. It wasn't identical but it was close enough and you didn't have to switch to out of the Windows ecosystem. That kind of scaling and software inertia is just too hard to compete against.

RetroTechie | root | parent
> That kind of scaling and software inertia is just too hard to compete against.

What stopped SGI from offering such $199 add-on cards, but with their name on it?

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pishpash | parent
3dfx and nVidia even put Matrox out of business. The 1990's were a true competitive paradise up and down the stack, not like today.