mrgoatCEO writes "It seems SGI has finished up their test comparing SCO's Unix System V code and that of the Linux Kernel, according to ITWorld. SGI found that any similarities between the systems (amounting to only about 200 lines of code) have been removed in Linux Kernel 2.4.22, and added that the similarities were 'trivial in amount.'" This follows moves by SCO to terminate SGI's Unix license.

yeremein writes "According to this vnunet.com article, SCO's code changes Update: 10/04 20:51 GMT by T : (This should read "SGI's" rather than "SCO's.") removing arguably System-V-related code from SGI's Linux submissions is 'not enough.' According to Blake Stowell of SCO, 'Making minor amendments to its XFS file system doesn't cure the breach. SGI must do more as outlined [in the August letter] to cure all of their breaches.' But later on in the article, we learn what was outlined in the August letter: 'We don't believe that SGI has taken all of the steps necessary to cure all of the breaches, and in fact in our letter to them, we state "SGI's breaches of these agreements cannot be cured."' So SCO essentially told SGI, 'You're in violation of our contract and unless you remedy the violations, we'll pull your UNIX license. Oh, BTW, you can't remedy the violations.' This looks to me like the clearest example yet of how SCO is acting in bad faith." Read on below for another snippet of SCO strangeness.

_Upsilon_ writes "SGI has released a letter to the Linux community in response to SCO's recent threat to revoke the UNIX licence for Irix. The letter mentions that they inadvertently did submit some System V code into the Linux kernel, that has since been removed (and some more in the process of being removed). The article points out that the code fragments in question had already been released into the public domain as well."

ComaVN writes "Not a big surprise for those who have followed the recent SCO misery, but SCO is going after SGI. According to SGI, SCO intends to terminate their Unix System V license, much like they did with IBM earlier. I guess it's hard to stop once you've chosen a certain direction for your company." sheddd writes "Does this case have any merit? Joe Formage has written a good article on SCO's strange behavior." Read on below for SCO's odd tactic of attacking the GPL by belittling IBM's legal diligence in not avoiding GPL'd software, and word on why Linux users aren't being served SCO invoices.

FatRatBastard writes "ZDNet News is speculating that SCO's next target in its legal actions against Linux may be SGI. According to the article its legal strategy will be to claim that XFS is a Unix derivative and therefore under SCO control, much like they claim JFS is in their suit with IBM. One fact not mentioned in the article that would support SGI being the next target is the malloc code they claimed was infringing at this years SCOForum was copyrighted SGI."

Phil Windley writes "Truly random numbers are crucial to good encryption. Most people have heard of Silicon Graphic's use of Lava Lamps to generate random numbers. There were some problems: it required special SGI hardware and software along with six lava lamps, and the solution wasn't portable. But the biggest drawback was that SGI patented the idea so it wasn't freely available. Now, some of the scientists behind the SGI random number system have create LavaRnd, an open source project for creating truly random numbers using inexpensive cameras, open source code, and inexpensive hardware. The system uses a saturated CCD in a light-tight can as a chaotic source to produce the seed. Software processes the result into truly random numbers in a variety of formats. The result is a random number that is crytographically sound, ranking at the top of its class in the NIST 800-22 Billion bit test. Its even portable, so the truly paranoid can take it with them when they travel."

Boone^ writes "The New York Times has an article (free reg. req.) talking about Cray Inc.'s recent resurgence in the realm of supercomputing. It discusses a bit of Cray's decline when the Cold War ended, "the occupation" under SGI, and the rebirth of the company after the Tera (now Cray Inc.) purchase. Recently Cray Inc. has been shipping their vector-based Cray X1 machine, designing ASCI Red Storm, and recently was one of 3 (also Sun, IBM) to win a large DARPA contract (PDF link) to design and develop a PetaFlops machine by 2010. Could Cray Inc. be poised for a comeback? Wall Street seems to think so."

Yogijalla writes "SGI and OpenGL ARB just announced the OpenGL 1.5 specification, introducing support for a new OGL Shading Language. Also, check out the new Java bindings to OpenGL. OGL 1.5 is a step towards the OGL 2.0, already suggested 2.0 by 3DLabs." Also worth pointing out that OpenML SDK has been released as well.

TechnoMage asks: "Before Win2K and XP I used to use software(software only) called Teleffect which lets you use the input from one computer (mouse and keyboard) on any number of other machines on the same network. Instead of using a switch box to control the machines, you use your TCP/IP connection. You would move the mouse off the screen and it would appear on the next computers monitor(similar to how windows now handles multiple monitors). There was no unreasonable limit to how many machines you could control. Teleffect with an install and a little configuring can make any machine controllable not being tied to any hardware restrictions or installation. To make it a little clearer as far as what this thing does. One keyboard and mouse, 10 machine, 10 monitors, 1 out of the 10 machines can control the mouse and keyboard functions of the other 9 machines over the network. You can also cut and paste from the clipboard of one machine to another machine. Once XP and 2K came out, I could not get it to work with them. Not only that but the people responsible for the software are MIA. Does anyone have any updated info on this software and how we can make it work with 2K or XP, or if there is going to be any development for this software, or even if there is something else out there that does the same thing?"

Jonathan C. Patschke writes "SGI unveiled two new graphics workhorses today, the Tezro (an Octane2 replacement) and the much-anticipated Onyx 4. The presence of the old "bug" logo warms the cockles of my heart, even if the desktop Tezro looks much like a subwoofer."

wowbagger asks: "We've all heard of the various apt-get packages for Mac OS X (and more power to them!), but does anybody know of a similar effort for Irix? Yes, SGI has their freeware distribution of GNU and other utilities, but there is as far as I've seen no good way to automatically update - you just have to go to the SGI open source server (when it is available) and try to find something new. Has anyone set up a apt/gentoo/redcarpet system to automate this process"

Oak Ridge National Lab has purchased from SGI an Altix 3000 (flash movie). This article claims that: SGI Altix 3000 is recognized as the first Linux cluster that scales up to 64 processors within each node and the first cluster ever to allow global shared memory access across nodes. There is more here, here, and here.

kerneljacabo writes "Yikes! SGI seems to be the lastest victim of the economic downturn. Today they announced an extensive 'restructuring,' which includes releasing about 10% (400) of their employess. Seems like no one is immune." SGI claims this'll save them $40M, as well as improve their performance next fiscal year.

gerddie asks: "Lately, we have seen a lot of companies starting to move their graphics stuff from high end to low end linux workstations (e.g. Dreamworks). Of course one reason to do such thing is cut costs, and therefore, at our institute we are going to replace or aging SGI O2s with Linux workstations. I wonder if you have experience with such a transition - especially regarding the usability of such machines for (scientific) visualization? What is working well, and where did you encounter pitfalls?"

SavoWood writes "In a realm which was (IIRC) SGI-only, a new tennant has moved in. It looks like the molecular biologists et al of the world will be able to send their SGIs off to the pasture and forget about the $500/yr. software updates, in favor of running their stereographic applications on Darwin/Mac OS X. A sales rep from Apple just sent me a press release with the link to StereoGraphics, a company that makes stereoscopic visualization products. Now, to send this message into the meat shredder of why you should do everything on SGI and how Darwin is just a playtoy... *GRIN*"

jnazario writes "In Dealers of Lightning, Michael Hiltzik illustrates a remarkable setting where research was leading to commercial products. Not all of it, though -- he is telling the story of Xerox PARC and discusses both technologies that made it to commercial shelves and too many that didn't. This is the central story of the book, told with great joy and creativity as well as skill. I got this book originally because I wanted a good read on the origin of network-based worms. What I got was one of the better books on the subject of the history of the computer industry I have yet found." Read on for more on Dealers of Lightning.

dlloyd writes "SGI has just publicly announced the Altix 3000 series of computers that can scale from 4 to hundreds of processors, with up to 64 processors per single system image. Processors each come in a C brick that has 4 CPUs. I/O is done though IX and PX bricks (12 PCI slots per brick, IX bricks have a base I/O controler and two ultra 160 disks inside), just like on the Origin 3900 series. Anything more than 8 CPUs (2 C bricks) is connected by R bricks, which route the NumaLink packets between nodes. The NumaLink network is good for an aggregate 6.4 gigabytes/sec to *each* node. That scales as you add more C and R bricks. Basically, you can think of this as SGI's origin 3000 series, except that it runs Linux and has Itanium2 processors. The performance and scalability is like nothing that has ever run Linux and is *far* ahead of the competition. For those of you who wonder why anyone would need a 64 processor Linux machine, many scientific and technical customers prefer running their code on large, single system image machines. Large single system image machines are also less labor intensive to maintain and admin, plus they work much better on code that needs to share memory and pass messages between threads (even myrinet and mpi is glacial compared to the SGI numalink network and running code multithreaded)."

nkrgovic writes " SGI has just launched a new CPU - the long expected R16000. The new CPU works on 700MHz, has 4MB secondary cache and more goodies. For now the new CPU is only used in SGI's Fuel workstations, but we should expect to see it pretty soon in SGI's Origin servers as well. With new high density compute nodes this should make the Origin's the fastest supercomputing server per square foot."

An anonymous reader writes "Film Gimp, the most popular open source tool in feature motion picture work, has released its first Macintosh version. Film Gimp is now available for Mac OS X, Linux, and SGI Irix. Film Gimp is a frame-by-frame retouching tool used by motion picture studios as an alternative tool to Adobe Photoshop. Film Gimp was used on the movies Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little, and other productions."

jarrod.smith writes " According to SGI will unveil its Intel® Itanium® 2 NUMAflex shared-memory supercomputer architecture (which runs Linux as its OS) at Supercomputing 2002 which runs this week in Baltimore, MD. The link at SGI says the system will be on display at the show. The exhibit floor opens this evening. Unfortunately I did not go this year. Can those lucky enough to be at the meeting scope it out and post comments?"