inc. for the successor company see silicon graphics international . silicon graphics inc. former type public industry computer hardware and software fate chapter 11 bankruptcy ; assets acquired by rackable systems which renamed itself silicon graphics international corp. founded november 9 1981 ; 34 years ago 1981 11 09 mountain view california u.s. 1 defunct may 11 2009 2009 05 11 headquarters sunnyvale california u.s. key people jim clark kurt akeley eng lim goh ed mccracken thomas jermoluk products high performance computing visualization and storage website www.sgi.com silicon graphics inc. later rebranded sgi historically known as silicon graphics computer systems or sgcs was an american high performance computing manufacturer producing computer hardware and software . founded in mountain view california in november 1981 by jim clark its initial market was 3d graphics computer workstations but its products strategies and market positions developed significantly over time . early systems were based on the geometry engine that clark and marc hannah had developed at stanford university and were derived from clark s broader background in computer graphics . the geometry engine was the first very large scale integration vlsi implementation of a geometry pipeline specialized hardware that accelerated the inner loop geometric computations needed to display three dimensional images . for much of its history the company focused on 3d imaging and were a major supplier of both hardware and software in this market . they reincorporated as a delaware corporation in january 1990 . through the mid to late 1990s the rapidly improving performance of commodity wintel machines began to erode sgi s stronghold in the 3d market . the porting of maya to other platforms is a major event in this process . sgi made several attempts to address this including a disastrous move from their existing mips platforms to the intel itanium as well as introducing their own linux based intel ia 32 based workstations and servers that failed in the market . in the mid 2000s the company repositioned itself as a supercomputer vendor a move that also failed . on april 1 2009 sgi filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to rackable systems a deal finalized on may 11 2009 with rackable assuming the name silicon graphics international . the remains of silicon graphics inc. became graphics properties holdings inc. contents 1 history 1.1 early years 1.2 massive growth 1.3 decline 1.4 re emergence 1.5 final bankruptcy and acquisition by rackable systems 1.6 graphics properties holdings inc. era 2 technology 2.1 motorola 680x0 based systems 2.1.1 iris 1000 series 2.1.2 iris 2000 and 3000 series 2.2 risc era 2.3 iris gl and opengl 2.4 ace consortium 2.5 entertainment industry 2.6 free software 2.7 acquisition of alias wavefront cray and intergraph 2.8 sgi visual workstations 2.9 switch to itanium 2.10 switch to xeon 3 user base and core market 4 high end server market 5 hardware products 5.1 motorola 68k based systems 5.2 mips based systems 5.2.1 workstations 5.2.2 servers 5.2.3 visualization 5.3 intel ia 32 based systems 5.3.1 workstations 5.3.2 servers 5.4 itanium based systems 5.5 intel amd x86 64 systems 5.6 fpga based accelerators 5.7 storage systems 5.8 storage solutions 5.9 displays 6 see also 7 references 8 external links history edit silicon graphics logo with distinctive 3 d box bug early years edit james h. clark left his position as an electrical engineering associate professor at stanford university to found sgi in 1982 along with a group of seven graduate students and research staff from stanford kurt akeley david j. brown tom davis rocky rhodes marc hannah herb kuta and mark grossman ; 2 along with abbey silverstone 3 and a few others . massive growth edit ed mccracken was ceo of silicon graphics from 1984 to 1997 . 4 during those years sgi grew from annual revenues of 5.4 million to 3.7 billion . 4 decline edit 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 . the porting of maya to linux mac os x and microsoft windows further eroded the low end of sgi s product line . in response to challenges faced in the marketplace and a falling share price ed mccracken was fired and sgi brought in richard belluzzo to replace him . under belluzzo s leadership a number of initiatives were taken which are considered to have accelerated the corporate decline . 5 one such initiative was trying to sell workstations running windows nt called visual workstations instead of just ones which ran irix the company s version of unix . this put the company an even more direct competition with the likes of dell making it more difficult to justify a price premium . the product line was unsuccessful and abandoned a few years later . 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 1999 in an attempt to clarify their current market position as more than a graphics company silicon graphics inc. changed its corporate identity to sgi although its legal name was unchanged . at the same time sgi announced a new logo consisting of only the letters sgi in a proprietary font called sgi created by branding and design consulting firm landor associates in collaboration with designer joe stitzlein . the new logo drew criticism for wasting the professional goodwill associated with the previous cube logo or bug . citation needed sgi continued to use the silicon graphics name for its workstation product line and later re adopted the cube logo for some workstation models . in november 2005 sgi announced that it had been delisted from the new york stock exchange because its common stock had fallen below the minimum share price for listing on the exchange . sgi s market capitalization dwindled from a peak of over seven billion dollars in 1995 to just 120 million at the time of delisting . in february 2006 sgi noted that it could run out of cash by the end of the year . 6 re emergence edit in mid 2005 sgi hired alix partners to advise it on returning to profitability and received a new line of credit . sgi announced it was postponing its scheduled annual december stockholders meeting until march 2006 . it proposed a reverse stock split to deal with the de listing from the new york stock exchange . in january 2006 sgi hired dennis mckenna as its new ceo and chairman of the board of directors . mr. mckenna succeeded robert bishop who remained vice chairman of the board of directors . on may 8 2006 sgi announced that it had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for itself and u.s. subsidiaries as part of a plan to reduce debt by 250 million . 7 8 two days later the u.s. bankruptcy court approved its first day motions and its use of a 70 million financing facility provided by a group of its bondholders . foreign subsidiaries were unaffected . on september 6 2006 sgi announced the end of development for the mips irix line and the irix operating system . 9 production would end on 29 december and the last orders would be fulfilled by march 2007 . support for these products would end after december 2013 . sgi emerged from bankruptcy protection on october 17 2006 . 10 its stock symbol at that point sgid.pk was canceled and new stock was issued on the nasdaq exchange under the symbol sgic . 11 this new stock was distributed to the company s creditors and the sgid common stockholders were left with worthless shares . 12 at the end of that year the company moved its headquarters from mountain view to sunnyvale . 13 its earlier north shoreline headquarters is now occupied by the computer history museum ; the newer amphitheater parkway headquarters was sold to google . both of these locations were award winning designs by studios architecture . citation needed 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 . 14 final bankruptcy and acquisition by rackable systems edit in december 2008 sgi received a delisting notification from nasdaq as its market value had been below the minimum 35 million requirement for 10 consecutive trading days and also did not meet nasdaq s alternative requirements of a minimum stockholders equity of 2.5 million or annual net income from continuing operations of 500 000 or more . 15 on april 1 2009 sgi filed for chapter 11 again and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to rackable systems for 25 million . 16 the sale ultimately for 42.5 million was finalized on may 11 2009 ; at the same time rackable announced their adoption of silicon graphics international as their global name and brand . 17 18 the bankruptcy court scheduled continuing proceedings and hearings for june 3 and 24 2009 and july 22 2009 . 19 20 needs update after the rackable acquisition vizworld magazine published a series of six articles that chronicle the downfall of sgi . graphics properties holdings inc. era edit during the silicon graphics inc. s second bankruptcy phase it was renamed to graphics properties holdings inc. gphi in june 2009 . 21 22 in 2010 gphi announced it had won a significant favorable ruling in its litigation with ati technologies and amd in june 2010 23 24 following the patent lawsuit originally filed during the silicon graphics inc. era . 25 following the 2008 appeal by ati over the validity of u.s. patent 6 650 327 327 and silicon graphics inc s voluntary dismissal of the u.s. patent 6 885 376 376 patent from the lawsuit 26 the federal circuit upheld the jury verdict on the validity of gphi s u.s. patent no. 6 650 327 and furthermore found that amd had lost its right to challenge patent validity in future proceedings . 27 on january 31 2011 the district court entered an order that permits amd to pursue its invalidity affirmative defense at trial and does not permit sgi to accuse amd s radeon r700 series of graphics products of infringement in this case . 28 on april 18 2011 gphi and amd had entered into a confidential settlement and license agreement that resolved this litigation matter for an immaterial amount and that provides immunity under all gphi patents for alleged infringement by amd products including components software and designs . on april 26 2011 the court entered an order granting the parties agreed motion for dismissal and final judgment . 29 in 2011 11 gphi filed another patent infringement lawsuit against apple inc. in delaware involving more patents than their original patent infringement case against apple last november for alleged violation of u.s. patents 6 650 327 327 u.s. patent 6 816 145 145 and u.s. patent 5 717 881 881 . 30 in 2012 the gphi filed lawsuit against apple sony htc corp lg electronics inc. and samsung electronics co. research in motion ltd. for allegedly violating patent relating to a computer graphics process that turns text and images into pixels to be displayed on screens . affected devices include apple iphone htc evo4g lg thrill research in motion torch samsung galaxy s and galaxy s ii and sony xperia play smartphones . 31 32 33 u.s. patent 6 650 327 1998 display system having floating