AllThingsD » Silicon Graphics

Lucasfilm's Data Center, and an Encounter With the Real Death Star (Video)

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:00:44 +0000

Wednesday I introduced you to Kevin Clark, master of all things data at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic. Today, as promised, I’m taking you into the data center Clark commands.

Shortly after my chat with Clark, ILM’s publicist Greg Grusby ushered me into the room, where, as you’ll hear, the roar of air conditioning units cooling all the machines makes it hard to hear much else.

The room is 10,500 square feet and contains the systems running all the things that you’d find in pretty much any other corporate data center for things like email and Web service. StarWars.com is hosted in the room, for example. But I was more interested in the machines used to produce the crazy cool visual effects. As Clark mentioned in our chat, ILM is using almost a full petabyte of storage–or nearly 1 million gigabytes–and for that it relies upon NetApp appliances.

I lingered over an older rack of machines nicknamed the Death Star. These are the old customized Racksaver servers, each containing a single AMD Athlon processor and 2 gigabytes of memory, that were used to render imagery for “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” They’re also now considered so old that it’s not cost-effective to run them any longer.

Then we saw the new machines: The IBM racks, which to me actually look like they belong on the Death Star, are a mix of LS22 servers with AMD processors and newer HS22‘s with Intel processors. They average 32GB of memory per blade and currently cranking away on several movies. If you’re among those eagerly awaiting the release of films like “Cowboys and Aliens,” “Pirates of the Caribbean 4,” “Super 8,” “Transformers 3,” “Battleship” and “The Avengers,” every blink of the lights on the Bladecenter brings them one step closer to completion.

We’re not done with the tours. Next up, I’ll take you on a walking tour of the Town of Dirt seen in the animated feature “Rango.” And before we’re done with all this, I’ll tell you what ILM considers its “secret weapon,” at least from a computing perspective. Enjoy the video.

[ See post to watch video ]

(Image via Wookiepedia)

Virident Validates New Strategy for Start-Ups

Don Clark — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:15:40 +0000

There’s a hot formula for hardware start-ups these days: Take standard components that are declining steadily in price, and offer proprietary chips and software that make them work much better.

That’s the path being pursued by Virident Systems, a Silicon Valley company that plans to offer its own server systems as well as sell technology to much larger server makers.

The company’s chief executive is Raj Parekh, who held executive titles at Sun Microsystems (JAVA) in the 1990s and also was a co-founder of Silicon Graphics (SGIC). He traces Virident’s existence to the fact that the design of most servers stacking up in computer rooms evolved years before the Internet. They often have massive number-crunching power, Parekh says, but aren’t particularly good at the main thing they are purchased to do–-answer Web queries.

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Chapter 11, in Which SGI Sells Itself to Rackable

John Paczkowski — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:00:20 +0000

“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.

Silicon Graphics: Revs Grow; New Chairman; Needs Capital

Eric Savitz — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:33:48 +0000

Silicon Graphics (SGIC) shares are up sharply on thin trading this morning after the company posted results last night for its fiscal fourth quarter ended June 27. The company also named Anthony Grillo, the CEO of American Securities Advisors, as chairman; he replaces Kevin Katari, of Watershed Asset Management, who resigned from the board. Also leaving the board is Chun Won Yi from investment firm Monarch Alternative Capital. As of June 30, Watershed held a 13 percent stake in the company, while Monarch owned 26.7 percent. Grillo has been on the board since October 2006.

Silicon Graphics reports some of the most complicated financial statements you will ever read; their latest quarter release is 26 pages long. Combine that with the fact that there are no analysts publishing on the stock and you have a set of results that are not easy to interpret. But here’s what I can tell you …

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