SGI Introduces first Linux-based high-performance visual computing system

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SGI INTRODUCES FIRST LINUX-BASED HIGH-PERFORMANCE VISUAL COMPUTING SYSTEM

Silicon Graphics Prism Designed to Solve New Classes of Visualization
Problems Facing Scientists and Engineers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (October 11, 2004)-Leveraging its position as the
world's leading innovator in high-performance visual computing, SGI (NYSE:
SGI) today announced the Silicon Graphics Prism(tm), the world's most
powerful and flexible Linux® OS-based visual computer product line. For the
first time, SGI has taken its most advanced computer graphics capability,
previously affordable to only a select few, and made it available on a truly
open and accessible platform. By combining standards-based Intel® Itanium® 2
processors, the Linux operating environment, and its world renowned advanced
graphics technology, SGI has created a system that is uniquely suited to
addressing the world's most demanding visual computing problems - all at
price points that make it accessible to a wider group of users.

"The pace of scientific discovery and engineering innovation has never been
more aggressive," said Paul McNamara, senior vice president and general
manager, Visual Systems Group, SGI. "Silicon Graphics Prism gives a broader
range of users the most advanced visualization capability available,
enabling them to be more competitive in today's innovation-driven economy.
By providing this capability on a Linux OS-based, open platform, more
researchers and innovators will be able to leverage this leading-edge level
of visual computing."

Silicon Graphics Prism stands alone in the visualization world in its
ability to break through capacity and interactivity barriers imposed by
other computer systems architectures.

Real-world applications such as cancer research, disaster preparedness, oil
exploration and car safety analysis involve enormous amounts of data.
Typical commodity graphics systems today must break this data into smaller
chunks for graphics processing - a process that's time-consuming and
imperfect. As a complete visualization system, Silicon Graphics Prism was
designed to address terabyte-sized, highly complex data as a single
contiguous data set in memory. Users are thereby able to quickly grasp
complex relationships within their data, leading, ultimately, to deeper
understanding of the issues. 

"Imagine sorting through a stack of one thousand postcard-sized images and
then pasting them together to form a mosaic of the whole," said Shawn
Underwood, marketing director, Visual Systems Group, SGI. "That's
essentially what is done with distributed processing across an array of
commodity boxes. It's slow and imperfect. With Silicon Graphics Prism you
see the whole picture instantly."

Because advanced visualization is integral to a host of different
applications, Silicon Graphics Prism is beneficial to a wide range of
markets. For example, university researchers can collaborate with distant
colleagues more easily, oil exploration teams can see seismic data in much
greater detail, drug discovery researchers can run proteomic simulations
interactively, and emergency management personnel can model disaster
scenarios. 

"NCSA is excited by the visual interactivity that Silicon Graphics Prism
brings to supercomputing," said Rob Pennington, interim director of NCSA.
"Our research collaborators include the world's leaders in their
disciplines, and they are looking for new ways to understand the terabytes
of data they are generating with their applications. Silicon Graphics Prism
system's combination of scalable visualization, large memory and scalable
computing turns researchers into active participants in their computational
research rather than observers that analyze results after they are
generated."

"Accelerating the pace of scientific discovery requires detailed insight
into terascale data-sets that is greatly enabled through the scalability,
power and bandwidth of Silicon Graphics Prism," said Larry Smarr, University
of California, San Diego and director, California Institute for
Telecommunications and Information Technology. "SGI's new system has the
ability to deliver insight to disparate groups using Visual Area Networking
which enables the kind of inter-disciplinary collaboration that will result
in unique breakthroughs." 

Breaking Barriers for Rapid Insight
With the Silicon Graphics Prism visualization family, limits are meant to be
broken. Scaling up to 16 graphics pipelines and 512 processors, the Silicon
Graphics Prism family offers many times the visualization capability of any
currently available computing system. For leaders, innovators and
visionaries, this scalability translates into the ability to interactively
visualize terabytes of data in their native form without having to waste
hours culling it beforehand. Instead, efforts can be focused on discovering
hidden details in the dataset in order to push limits and solve previously
unsolved problems.

The range of problems that customers are tackling with Silicon Graphics
Prism include:
§	unlocking the secrets of the planet
§	diagnosing life-threatening medical conditions in unprecedented
detail 
§	achieving six-sigma quality by enabling domain experts to work
collaboratively, not sequentially
§	extracting currently unrecoverable petroleum assets

Simple and Easy Application Migration
To greatly simplify and accelerate running applications on the new platform
SGI has turned to Transitive Corporation for its QuickTransit(tm) product
that allows software applications compiled for one processor and operating
system to run on another processor and operating system without any source
code or binary changes. With QuickTransit, researchers, scientists and
engineers currently running applications on other SGI® systems - based on
the MIPS® processor and IRIX® operating system - can transparently run these
applications on the new system. QuickTransit allows software developers to
quickly provide a fully functional, high-performance solution on Silicon
Graphics Prism, while circumventing the often lengthy and expensive process
of completing a full native port. 

Silicon Graphics Prism is built on a foundation of SGI® NUMAflex(tm)
shared-memory architecture. It gives the system the large, complex data
memory functionality needed for today's real-time technical environments. A
combination of Intel Itanium 2 processors, the Linux operating system, and
standards-based graphics accelerators from ATI make the system powerful, yet
economical. With an entry price of $30,000 (U.S.), Silicon Graphics Prism
introduces a new pricing model for SGI visualizations systems. This low
entry price allows SGI to address a wider community of users and developers.


On top of it all is SGI's highly advanced array of visual computing products
and a host of OpenGL® visualization software development tools. These
include SGI's cross-platform OpenGL Performer(tm) and OpenGL Volumizer(tm)
application programming interfaces (APIs). These tools provide graphics
functionality and the best fidelity in the industry.

Silicon Graphics Prism is available through SGI sales offices and SGI
Solution Providers worldwide. Additional information on SGI's scalable,
high-performance visualization solutions is available at
www.sgi.com/products/visualization.

SILICON GRAPHICS | The Source of Innovation and Discovery(tm)
SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: SGI), is a leader in
high-performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to
provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative
breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in
brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate,
providing technologies for homeland security and defense, or enabling the
transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to
addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and
creative users. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in
Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com. 

-end-

Silicon Graphics, SGI, Onyx, OpenGL, IRIX, the SGI logo and the SGI cube are
registered trademarks and, Silicon Graphics Prism, NUMAflex, OpenGL
Performer, OpenGL Volumizer and The Source of Innovation and Discovery are
trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other
countries worldwide. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in
several countries. MIPS is a registered trademark of MIPS Technologies,
Inc., used under license by Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Intel and Itanium are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries
in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned
herein are the property of their respective owners.

This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding SGI
technologies and third-party technologies that are subject to risks and
uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to
differ materially from those described in such statements. The viewer is
cautioned not to rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which are
not a guarantee of future or current performance. Such risks and
uncertainties include long-term program commitments, the performance of
third parties, the sustained performance of current and future products,
financing risks, the impact of competitive markets, the ability to integrate
and support a complex technology solution involving multiple providers and
users, the acceptance of applicable technologies by markets and customers,
and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's most recent SEC
reports, including its reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Chase
Media Relations Specialist
Access Communications for SGI
415-844-6289
chase@accesspr.com

Jamie Beane
Assistant Account Executive
Access Communications for SGI
415-844-6279
jbeane@accesspr.com