sgi-compaq deal

[Roger B.A. Klorese]

In article <JIM.91Mar9121809 at baroque.Stanford.EDU> jim at baroque.Stanford.EDU (James Helman) writes:
>Does anyone know why CDC, NHK or Prime invested in SGI?  I don't recall
>any joint product efforts.

CDC's Cyber 900 series is the 4D series.

The Prime story is a touch more interesting.  Back in the mid-80's, Prime
set out to build its own workstation, based on CPU boards from Mips (at
the time, by the way, I worked for neither Prime nor Mips, so this is
from memory), with graphics by Raster Technology.  (The Raster Tech deal
was announced.)  At high levels within Prime, it was determined that
the time to market was too great, especially considering their lack of
experience with desktop products.  (This, remember, was the company which
told Bill Poduska not to proceed with "Primos on the desktop," so he left
and founded Apollo...)  They sought out, and invested in, SGI to foster
the building of a workstation combining Mips RISC with SGI graphics... the
first 4D systems.  Prime sold these until the aftermath of their buyout
of Computervision led them to consolidate their workstation line for CAD
products on Sun systems.
-- 
ROGER B.A. KLORESE                                  MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
MS 6-05    930 DeGuigne Dr.   Sunnyvale, CA  94088              +1 408 524-7421
rogerk at mips.COM         {ames,decwrl,pyramid}!mips!rogerk         "I'm the NLA"
"WAR: been there, done that... hated it."  -- QueerPeace/DAGGER chant