Just a few days remain in Rackable’s 25-day wait for acquisition of SGI, and while no-one has officially made an offer, it seems that a few of them are considering it. John West over at InsideHPC has pulled some strings and gotten the scoop on a few vendors, including one very interesting possibility:
HP: Although HP and IBM dominate the Top500, HP hasn’t had a strong presence in the top 10 for a while. SGI’s R&D in HPC could reinvigorate their offering. HP has a market cap of just about $85B right now, with $10B of cash and equivalents on hand. [Update: Readers have also pointed out that HP is the only other large-scale Itanium vendor in the US. Buying SGI would be a consolidation of technology and talent surrounding the
platform.]
An HP-SGI consolidation would be an interesting one. While they both do alot of work with Itanium, Itanium simply hasn’t “taken off” as the CPU of choice in HPC. HP does, however, seem to have the money if it wanted. Their Q1`09 statement shows a $28.8B profit and $100B in assets, along with a $1B Net gain in Cash.
Update: Just got word from a reputable source that the SGI Auction closes today at 5pm Eastern. So we should be hearing something soon one way or another.
Update: Rumors are circling about the Results of the Auction.
InsideTrack: rumors of other bidders for SGI [Updated] | insideHPC.com.
Bids had to be submitted by yesterday (04/27) and today is the
“auction”, whatever that means. The court will make a decision on Friday.