MIPS: The hyperactive history and legacy of the pioneering RISC architecture

Re:MIPS: The hyperactive history and legacy of the pioneerin... by sillywalk on Sunday July 20, 2025 @12:13AM (#44621907)

> SGI in general was doing so well with MIPS for a long time in the 1990s but they both died, essentially, because SGI backed the wrong horse and believed the Itanium hype, abandoning the MIPS ISA just as it was at its most successful.

Even if they'd ignored Itanium and went full-on MIPS SGI never released a next-gen Graphics System after InfiniteReality.

Linux and Windows NT

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Re:MIPS: The hyperactive history and legacy of the pioneerin... by brucehoult on Sunday July 20, 2025 @02:11AM (#44622421)

Well, yeah, management was dropping the ball on that side too. Should have hired Jensen, eh?

They did release a few updates to InfiniteReality but none were architectural, mostly just bumps to the size of texture and image RAM (32x!).

By the time InfiniteReality3 was introduced, NVidia already had GeForce 256 (and corresponding Quadro) which was was designed with input from former SGI engineers including ones who worked on InfiniteReality.

So, again, serious management fumble to lose those guys.

(regarding SGI and MIPS as one management entity, as they were until 1998-9)

SGI ended up using Quadro4 in their high end machines, as well as ATI cards in lower end ones.

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