[PLUG] SunOS vs Solaris version numbers.

[Mark Bynum]

Being a former SGI employee, Geoff's recollection is correct.
SGI bought Cray and then sold the rights to the E10k to Sun.
I may disagree about that being SGI's downfall. It was most
likely about their lack of direction, i.e. getting rid of 
IRIX and becoming a total Linux vendor, and then changing that back.
Also Rick Belluzo being president and now being a Microsoft, uh, employee.
On second thought, he's not even a Microsoft employee any more. Their stock
might go up.

Mark

On Fri, Aug 16, 2002 at 12:10:50PM -0700, Geoff Burling wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, Richard Langis wrote:
> 
> > The technology behind the E10k was purchased from Cray.  Cray had
> > purchased SGI's server division about 2 weeks before Sun aquired Cray,
> > and I believe Cray had also purchased Floating Point Systems prior to
> > that.  Some of the people I work with used to work at FPS.
> >
> When I inteviewed for a job at Sun back in 1998, it was with the
> group who assembled the E10K. One of my interviewers (who had been
> with the product from its FPS days) explained that the history of
> the E10K was that it was first FPS, then bought by Cray, who then were
> bought by SGI.
> 
> SGI had their own high-end servers similar to the proto-E10K, so in a
> break with the rest of the computer industry (which is to discontinue
> the product, & thereby force hundreds of people to scramble for new
> jobs), they sold the division to Sun. And SGI proceeded to follow their
> own drummer, thereby taking their stock price to the levels it enjoys
> today.