Greg Estes: We’re very keen about participation in Linux community. Releasing XFS to the community is a great example of our commitment. However, there are things that Linux doesn’t do that IRIX does. But IRIX has received a lot of intense focus for a long time. I think the most CPUs you can run on a Linux system is 16, while on IRIX it’s 1024. If a client is looking for the kind of power and extraordinary throughput that 1024 CPUs offers, Linux isn’t an option, nor is any other OS for that matter. We’re it.
23. SGI is a company that seems to influence technology far beyond it’s range of customers.
Greg Estes: We are creating the technology that is behind the greatest breakthroughs in the 21st century. You could look at the whole 3D graphics industry, NVIDIA, ATI. We brought 3D graphics to the industry. Not to mention OpenGL, which we licensed to the industry. The graphics industry wouldn’t have come about without SGI.
You can see our influence in the next generation of 3D Graphics with our Reality Centers. We use the term Reality Center for a variety of immersive and non-immersive technologies. Typically, it’s a bank of three large screens that cover the peripheral vision, are powered by three Onyx systems and are seamlessly edge integrated.
24. You’re also making a big push for Visual Area Networking (VAN).
Greg Estes: I think that we’re really onto something with VAN. I don’t think that we knew what we had when it was being developed. It was something that customers were telling us that they wanted, the ability to access their Onyx work station remotely. We’re shifting pixels around instead of data, with this extraordinarily thin client.
25. And how is VAN being received?
Greg Estes: Well, if you were an IRIX ISV suddenly the usability of our big machines, and by extension your product, has been extended and a new market is now available. And you can access this new opportunity on NT, Linux, Solaris Mac or PalmOS machines without porting code.
26. Greg, the Linux Journal article was pretty harsh at points. How did it go over at SGI?
Greg Estes: It was disappointing. It felt as if some of the statements were taken out of context in the entire article. It's disappointing because ILM is an Oscar winning customer at the top of their game and they have a long history of being successful with IRIX and SGI equipment.
It sounded like opinions coming from a different viewpoint, rather than someone who has had a lot of success with SGI.
What I must say about ILM is that in our experience they're the brightest, most talented and honorable people you would ever want to work with.
That's why it's curious to hear these comments disparaging our equipment versus other alternatives.
27. The adoption of Linux in Hollywood seems to be a popular story for the press.
Greg Estes: It's very easy for the press to say that customers are switching from SGI hardware to Linux on Intel IA_32 machines. Much of the move is amplified by vendors in this market space; however we have a ton of customers using SGI equipment in Hollywood.
Our competitors are simply putting as much in the air about their success as we do about ours.
28. Is Linux a growing force in Hollywood?
Greg Estes: Linux in Hollywood? Absolutely. Absolutely. A good animator can do good work on a Linux system. What studios need is for their animators to use the industry standard tools. And for those companies that can afford R&D departments like the big studios, they also need the ability to build their own tools, and do their work on as cheap a platform as they can afford. For a while SGI was the cheapest that would provide the necessary power. That was until commodity based systems advanced enough to perform adequately for some of those tasks.
29. Why is Linux so popular in this market space?
Greg Estes: I think the technology_focused customers in Hollywood are pretty glad that they don't have to move to NT because it's pretty tough to innovate on NT, especially in graphics and that's precisely what the film industry needs.
I should point out that there is a lot of stuff in IRIX that isn't in Linux. That's why people such as the Visual Effects Society (among others in the FX world) want Linux to do what IRIX can do and they want all of it from one company. And no one company is doing that but SGI.
31. And IRIX is still satisfying customers?
Greg Estes: Absolutely. PCs are getting more capable, but many, many customers still use IRIX everyday. Even at ILM _ every single frame goes through an SGI machine at some point.
32. Commodity PCs have advanced thanks to Moore's law. How does the law apply outside x86?? development?
Estes : Moore's Law is fundamental. It says that on a specific date you know that for, say, $3000 you can get a machine with X amount of computing power. That's great. But what if you are a computer maker and don't offer a machine in the $3000 range?
That's an important thing to consider, because it turns out that, Moore's law also holds true for all price ranges. So if you're customer that is looking for, say, $50,000 of computing power there is product available at that range and it will have progressed in terms of power just as much in relative terms as the $3,000 system.
As computing power improves through the whole range then higher end vendors will lose market to cheaper alternatives. However, there are also problems that become more approachable to higher end machines.
PC makers could find that people who might have bought a PC for email and scheduling can do those things very well with a $200 PDA. The market drops out for all computer makers at some point. This is the natural order of things. It's not that we're losing to the competition; we're not even trying to compete for those seats. We're chasing new parts of the market that require higher_end processing, visualization and data storage.
33. So what now?
Greg Estes: We're trying to solve different problems now. But what we're working on is determining where SGI fits into the workflow, and that position is constantly shifting. Where we excel is in areas like high_definition visualization, or work in digital dailies or ongoing display rendering, like inferno and flame style editing.
Recently we've seen a shift from volume Maya desktops to higher_end machines able to manage all the systems in the facility. Solutions like (storage area networks) that can be used by anyone in an organization whatever client they're using, and at Fiber Channel rates.
One really good example of our new customers is Efilm, the result of a partnership between Deluxe Laboratories and Panavision. EFILM uses SGI IRIX visualization systems, storage and high_speed connectivity to produce high_resolution digital distribution masters that can be used for film output, digital cinema releases and home video.
- "First Part of the Interview"
- "Second Part of the Interview"
- "Third Part of the Interview"
