It’s official, SGI has just issued a press release stating that Rackable has court approval to purchase SGI’s Assets. The final amount was $42.5Million in cash plus “certain liabilities”.

FREMONT, Calif. and SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 30, 2009 – Rackable Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:RACK), a leading provider of ecological servers and storage products for medium to large-scale data centers, today announced that it received court approval to acquire substantially all of the assets of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) for $42.5 million in cash, plus the assumption of certain liabilities associated with the acquired assets.

The sale, pursuant to an amended asset purchase agreement as approved today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, allows Rackable Systems to complete the previously announced transaction under Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The acquisition is anticipated to be completed by approximately May 8, 2009, subject to closing conditions.

“We are pleased with today’s news,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and CEO of Rackable Systems. “With this acquisition, Rackable will be positioned to solve the most demanding business and technology challenges our customers confront today. We believe we will have a stronger company with differentiated product lines and professional services; reaching commercial, government and scientific sectors on a worldwide basis.”

Rackable and SGI customers will benefit from a comprehensive portfolio of hardware, software and services, enabling the deployment of technologies for large-scale data storage and management, clustered compute scale-out, shared memory systems, visualization solutions, data center solutions and HPC productivity tools.

To learn more and for further updates, please visit www.rackable.com/sgi.

via SGI – Press Releases: Rackable Systems Receives Court Approval to Purchase Silicon Graphics Assets.

Hardware rackable, sgi

One enterprising commenter found the studio behind the AMGEN Angiogenesis videos, and I was able to contact them to get some information on how the videos were made.  Republished here for your benefit:

Update: On the afternoon of May 5th, I was contacted by the original commenter.  AMGEN seems to think that the details of how the animation was made gives them a competitive advantage over other pharmaceutical companies, and don’t want the information out.  I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me either.  Unfortunately, it was putting the original commenter in hot water so, to preserve his job, I’ve removed it.  Don’t complain to me, complain to Amgen.  All he’s allowed to say is that it was done by Random42.

Graphics amgen, random42

Shortly after I published my SGI Special Edition Podcast, I was contacted by a former SGI Engineer (who preferred to remain Anonymous) with several stories to tell of what happened to SGI. It’s an amazing story full of minor hardware glitches that wound up costing millions, bone-headed oversights during acquisitions, and basic mismanagement of a billion dollar company. The story is far too long and involved for a single post, so I’ll be adding it in chapters over the next few days. So come on inside and witness the saga of what really happened to SGI over the years.. The story has never been told, until now. We’ll begin at the Top:

Chapter 1: Management

Chapter 2: The Acquisitions

Chapter 3: Hardware Problems

Chapter 4: False Starts

Chapter 5: PR Flops

Read more…

Graphics, Hardware, Science feature, sgi, sgi-bts

NVidia has just released their first set of Windows7 drivers, supporting everything since the GeForce6.  They have full support for all the special Windows7 DirectX API’s (DirectX Compute, Direct2D, DirectWrite, and DXVA-HD), CUDA 2.2, expand their GPGPU acceleration support witht he NVidia Video Encoding Library to GPU’s with less than 32 cores, and improve performance from 10 – 45% in several games.

This is a beta driver supporting GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, and 200-series desktop GPUs. This driver package installs WDDM v1.1 for GeForce 8, 9, and 200-series (DirectX 10) GPUs and WDDM v1.0 for GeForce 6 and 7-series (DirectX 9) GPUs.

This driver supports all of the new Windows 7 GPU-accelerated DirectX APIs: DirectX Compute, Direct2D, DirectWrite, and DXVA-HD

Get the 32-bit version here, and the 64-bit version here.

Hardware nvidia, windows7

Just a reminder that the Living In HD 30×30 Campaign begins tonight at midnight! Every day for the next 30 days they’ll be picking a winner each day that gets their pick of:

• DMC-ZS3 10.1 MegaPixel camera
• DMC-TS1 12.1 MegaPixel camera
• HDC-TM20 16GB Full HD Camcorder

Dunno about you, but I’m hoping for a camcorder!

Hardware contest, panasonic

Double Negative’s Senior Technical Director Ziah Fogel sat down for a short interview with the students at Hyper Island about visual effects education and processes.

What’s your best advice to those who want to work with visual effects?

Getting your foot in the door in the visual effects industry can be difficult. Don’t get discouraged – keep trying! Make an amazing reel and work hard until you get a break. Sometimes the easiest way to get your foot in the door is with an internship, or by working your way up by starting as a PA or a runner at an animation or VFX house, using your free time learning the tools and speaking to people who are doing the job you want to do!

via Hyper Island: More from Double Negative’s Ziah Fogel.

Graphics doublenegative, interview

Netbooks usually aren’t powerhouses of 3D Graphics capabilities, but a new tool called GMABooster from Vladimir Plenskiy claims the ability to boost the clock speed of the Intel GMA950 (used in many netbooks) from the default 133 or 166Mhz up to 400Mhz.

The application only affects the clock speed, and doesn’t change the voltage level – meaning that battery life and heat output shouldn’t be affected too much. Ben over at UMPCPortal ran some tests on two netbooks – the HP Mini 1000 and the Sony Vaio UX180 – and reported a increase in Crystal Mark scores of around 22 percent.

Still doesn’t change the fact that the Intel GMA chip is pretty lackluster to begin with.

via bit-tech.net | Netbook graphics given a boost.

Hardware gma, intel, netbooks

ArtiosCAD7.4 is out, and in this version they have a few new features.  First off is the “Mate” tool that allows you to simply assemble and visualize folds and parts, to test simple assemblies.  Also, they’ve added “Curved Creases” and “Bend” support to further improve the functionality of the product.

For 27 years, The BoxMaker Inc, Kent, WA (USA). has been a single-source packaging supplier of corrugated shipping containers, foam materials, point of purchase displays, wholesale packages, retail containers, and custom printed labels. “Using 3D ‘Curved Creases’, we can visualize curved creases in a folding carton without first cutting a sample to determine if we got it right. It’s nice to see it on the monitor first to see if the concept it going to work,” remarks Darren Neupert, BoxMaker structural designer. “We can send an image via email to a customer and get a preliminary OK before we go ahead with mock-ups. It will allow us to be much more creative with folding carton designs.”

via PressRelease display – EskoArtwork.

Science artioscad

As shown in This PDF Calendar.

09-11701-mg Silicon Graphics, Inc. CH: 11
Sale Hearing to Approve Auction.
Dkt #: 14 Rel #:

09-11701-mg Silicon Graphics, Inc. CH: 11
Objection of Spectra Logic Corporation to Proposed Cure Amount (Private Label Partner (PLP)
Agreement. (CC: Doc #115)
Dkt #: 115 Rel #:
VACATED: ADJOURNED TO 5/8/2009 AT 10:00 AM

09-11701-mg Silicon Graphics, Inc. CH: 11
Objection of Spectra Logic Corporation to Proposed Cure Amount (Evaluation Agreements For Spectra T200 Base Chassis and Spectra T120 Library Direct Connect Chassis. (CC: Doc #116)
Dkt #: 116 Rel #:
VACATED: ADJOURNED TO 5/8/2009 AT 10:00 AM

09-11701-mg Silicon Graphics, Inc. CH: 11
Hearing Re: Objection And Reservation Of Rights Of Sun Microsystems, Inc. To Debtors’ Cure Notice And Contract Assignment Notice Pertaining To Certain Executory Contracts And Unexpired
Leases. (CC: Doc #121)
Dkt #: 121 Rel #:
VACATED: ADJOURNED TO 5/8/2009 AT 10:00 AM

09-11701-mg Silicon Graphics, Inc. CH: 11
Hearing RE: Objection And Reservation Of Rights Of Seagate Technology LLC To Debtors’ Cure Notice And Contract Assignment Notice Pertaining To Certain Executory Contracts And Unexpired
Leases. (CC: Doc #122)
Dkt #: 122 Rel #:
VACATED: ADJOURNED TO 5/8/2009 AT 10:00 AM

09-11701-mg Silicon Graphics, Inc. CH: 11
Hearing RE: Objection And Reservation Of Rights Of LSI Corporation To Debtors’ Cure Notice And Contract Assignment Notice Pertaining To Certain Executory Contracts And Unexpired Leases.
(CC: Doc #127)
Dkt #: 127 Rel #:
VACATED: ADJOURNED TO 5/8/2009 AT 10:00 AM

09-11701-mg Silicon Graphics, Inc. CH: 11
Hearing RE: Objection And Reservation Of Rights Of Super Micro Computer, Inc. To Debtors’ Cure Notice And Contract Assignment Notice Pertaining To Certain Executory Contracts And
Unexpired Leases. (CC: Doc #131)
Dkt #: 131 Rel #:
VACATED: ADJOURNED TO 5/8/2009 AT 10:00 AM

So it looks like most of the docket was rescheduled to May 8th (Next Friday).  Of interest is the list of vendors here:

• SuperMicro Computer
• LSI Corporation
• Seagate Technology LLC
• Sun Technologies
• SpectraLogic

I believe most of these are simply objecting to the wipeout of debt occuring through the Chapter11, but I’m not a Lawyer.  Anyone care to clarify?

Hardware sgi

You can take a look at Judge Martin Glenn’s Calendar for today and see that today’s the day of reckoning for SGI:

10:00 AM
09-11701-mg
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
RE: Doc #177; Objection to Motion

10:00 AM
09-11701-mg
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
RE: Doc #245; Notice of Hearing

10:00 AM
09-11701-mg
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
RE: Doc #253; Notice of Hearing

10:00 AM
09-11701-mg
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
RE: Doc #274; Notice of Hearing

As soon as I hear more, I’ll update.

Hardware sgi