SGI banks on Linux for turnaround

SGI has unveiled yet another strategy that it hopes will lift it out of the financial quagmire, after conceding defeat in its attempts to sell off its Intel-based workstation.

SGI has unveiled yet another strategy that it hopes will lift it out of the financial quagmire, after conceding defeat in its attempts to sell off its Intel-based workstation.

Linux has been cited as a potential saviour, as SGI machines will incorporate the operating system expected by the end of the year. It is being also being heavily promoted by SGI as it attempts to cut costs and improve performance.

In August, SGI planned to offload its Visual Workstation product as a key part of its strategy to turn around its fortunes. By October, the company had admitted that it could not find a party willing to take the product on. It has now admitted defeat and will keep the product line.

Failure to find a partner meant SGI had to drop plans to make the 320 and 540 models of Visual Workstation, which would have been targeted at the more cost-sensitive side of the market. The decision to cancel the two models is reported to have cost the company $60m (£37.5m). Work will continue on a range of next-generation Intel-based workstations which should be available in the second quarter of 2000.

Linux is to be the OS of choice for these workstations, as well as other SGI products. As software support for Linux workstations is still lacking, SGI is hoping to give the OS a helping hand by releasing some of its OpenGL graphics software as Open Source.

John Vrolyk, product group senior vice-president at SGI, said: "SGI firmly believes Open Source software and industry-standard components will lead to radical advances in high-performance computing."

Although it has taken Visual Workstation back in-house, SGI looks set to sell its supercomputer division, Cray Research, to Gores Technology Group.