>> IRIX (at least circa 6.5, that's the earliest I can remember) was primarily used for graphics.
>> I'm not sure what specifically made the architecture so graphics-friendly
Every workstation vendor had their own UNIX back then. SGI built in what became OpenGL and had the graphics hardware to pair it with.
Later on they added things like the XFS file system (think 9TB volumes in 1994), 64-bit MIPS support, and multi-CPU support. All which were key in allowing SGI to do the things they did with 3D.
To this day I still have an irrational love for SGI systems. I've been keeping an eye out for a case to use in a modern build just because. SGI also did a lot of pushing of the industry in good directions imho.
SGI is basically the company that shows amazing engineers cannot overcome psychotic management. From their Windows strategy to their spending, SGI is the pulled defeat from the jaws of victory company.
I think they were just torn between doubling down on their own RISC processors or moving with the times and going Intel. They ended up trying to do both, and that's never going to work.
I remember seeing my first Indigo machine and being utterly amazed at both the design of the computer, the big ass monitor, the graphical interface (my friend and I just stood there opening and closing the program groups since they had this very cool 3D effect... and of course we were younger so this was super rare for us).
Amazing machines. I would love to get my hands on one of them.
They were great machines, the Indy, the O2, Octane, etc. At the time there was really nothing comparable from a graphics performance perspective. However, even the latest mips SGI machine the tezro gets absolutely spanked by a modern machine in every possible way. They still have a premium price tag, probably due to rarity and legacy software in a few industries, but have poor performance vs alternatives.
I'm putting my hope on raptor engineering or another firm delivering a Power based system, the days of the great unix workstation providers are in the past.
I was only 12 or 13 then but I remember the discontinuity between an AS/400 setup vs SunOS 2.6 (does that sound right for about '98?). But yeah I distinctly remember fighting against the platforms with such frustration (though it helped me a lot in my career so I can't complain too much).
Wow, I realized they had a bit of advantage over their competitors but I didn't know their engineers were of that caliber. I knew that SGI made STL, but I had totally forgotten that they standardized OGL as well. Multi-CPU support VAX/VMS style still takes the cake in my book but I remember XFS being absolutely incredible re: latency against ext2 on Linux (2.2?) for small files while running an image host in the early 2000s.
Anyways, that makes a lot lot more sense now as to why it'd be the platform of choice. I wish I had a chance to grab that gear before it was decommissioned :(
Every workstation vendor had their own UNIX back then. SGI built in what became OpenGL and had the graphics hardware to pair it with.
Later on they added things like the XFS file system (think 9TB volumes in 1994), 64-bit MIPS support, and multi-CPU support. All which were key in allowing SGI to do the things they did with 3D.