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<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Sgi_cube_logo.png" align="right" alt="SGI's Unix variant fading into history">SGI's Unix variant fading into history
By Stephen Shankland
September 8, 2006, 11:05 AM PT

Silicon Graphics will phase out its Irix operating system and the MIPS chip-based computers the Unix variant runs on at the end of the year, 18 years after the once-vaunted computing company introduced the technology.

"After nearly two decades of leading the world in innovation and versatility, the MIPS-Irix products will end their general availability on Dec. 29, 2006," SGI said on its Web site. SGI will still sell some systems "through special arrangement only" after that, and support will last through at least December 2013, the company said. The move isn't a surprise.

SGI has been moving its product line to Intel's Itanium processors and the Linux operating system in recent years. But it does mark the end of another chapter as the computing industry whittles down the list of hardware and software foundations in widespread use. SGI rose to glory with high-end machines, particularly those suited to graphics work such as the creation of dinosaur special-effects for the movie "Jurassic Park."

But SGI has struggled financially as mainstream computing equipment grew more powerful, and business-focused companies such as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM turned their attention to high-performance computing.

<img src="http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/images/smiles/source.jpg"> ZDNET News
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