“Lately Silicon Graphics Inc. has had the kind of upward momentum associated with the hit movies produced with its whizzy high-powered work stations, like ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ and ‘Jurassic Park.’ After the company outperformed Wall Street’s earnings estimates last week and the stock jumped 15 percent, analysts scrambled to upgrade ratings and future earnings forecasts.”

– Silicon Graphics’ Hot Run Goes On, New York Times, 1994

Time was, there was a Silicon Graphics (SGIC) workstation on every desk in computationally-intense industries like chemistry and film production. No longer. Cheap Linux boxes have rendered them obsolete and SGI, the company, along with them. This morning, SGI, which recently endured a brace of layoffs, filed for bankruptcy protection for a second time and sold itself to Rackable Systems, which makes server and storage products for midsize and large data centers, for $25 million in cash.

“We have been working very hard to strengthen our company, and today, we’ve taken another big step in that direction,” SGI CEO Robert Ewald said in a statement that would make even the most exuberant of SGI-optimists wince. “This transaction represents a compelling opportunity for Silicon Graphics’ customers, partners and employees, who can all benefit from the emerging stronger company with better technologies, products and markets [sic] reach.”

A sad ending for SGI, which really reinvented computer graphics and made quite a name for itself in the high-performance computing space back in the day.