[rescue] SGI and Intel (was: Another fine business decision for us axp-lovers)

[Dave McGuire]

On June 25, Loomis, Rip wrote:
> The SN1 architecture (A/K/A Origin 3000) is designed
> to support swapping out the MIPS processor bricks
> and swapping in IA-64 bricks.  Is any current SGI
> customer going to do that anytime soon?  No idea.
> Is SGI still corporately committed to migration to
> IA-64?  No recent information.  But SGI did at one
> point supposedly make a decision to transition *all*
> systems (desktops and servers) away from MIPS and
> towards IA-64.

  I'm willing to bet that that was simply some suit bucking for favors
from Intel.  Fact is, they've got better-performing processors NOW
than Intel's are SUPPOSED to be if they ever start shipping.  We'll
just have to wait and see.  If SGI goes the way of the suit, well, so
be it.  It's a good thing that their machines don't have reliability
problems (except for Indy power supplies of course, but I think Indys
are pretty crappy anyway)...

       -Dave McGuire