[l1k]

Filed chapter 11 twice.

Bad management made the wrong bet, thought Itanium and Windows would take over the world.

But what really broke all UNIX workstation manufacturers' backs was the unwillingness to cannibalize their products with affordable machines. SGI workstations were not affordable to students, so they got x86 machines instead and installed Linux. Google was built with x86-based Linux boxes because that's what the founders were using and could afford. UNIX workstation manufacturers lost an entire generation of young engineers that way. Apple eventually offered what they should have: Sleek, affordable machines with a rock-solid UNIX underneath a polished UI.

[zozbot234]

This is why some people are so excited about RISC-V, BTW - they're re-enacting the exact same market play as x86 did back then. Starting out from low-end hardware only good for single-purpose use (we call that "embedded" these days) and scaling up to something that can run a proper OS, with MMU and virtual memory support. And doing it while beating everyone else on price, as well as potentially on performance.

[cartoonfoxes]

I think it was 2001? that Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) replaced their SGI workstations with linux boxes running RedHat 7.5 and powered by a Nvidia Quadro2 gpu.

[samstave]

That and in ~2004, ILM, along with the other LucasFilm and Games --> Lucas Presidio... during which a lot of SGI machines were scrapped.

Source: I was the designer of the datacenter and network cabling infra for the Presidio.