SGI and PipelineFX "One-Stop" Render Management Solution Accelerates Workflow and Boosts Productivity

New SGI Altix XE servers and PipelineFX's Qube! Render Farm Management Application Allow Faster Collaboration and Affordable Resource Management

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., (June 26, 2006)—Silicon Graphics (OTC: SGID) has teamed with PipelineFX™ to bring its Qube!™ render farm management system benefits to a complete SGI® server and Network Attached Storage (NAS) workflow solution. Built around the new SGI® Altix® XE servers based on the new Intel® Xeon® dual-core processors and SGI® Infinite Storage NAS technology, the new Render Management Solution is relevant to a range of market segments including animation, special effects, game development, bioinformatics, engineering and government efforts. Ideal for rendering and build processing alike, Qube! integrates directly with most leading 3D modeling and rendering applications, and has demonstrated many times that it can improve productivity and increase content quality while optimizing hardware resources.

"With the launch of the Altix XE servers, SGI is getting back into digital media in a big way and it's just the perfect time to team with SGI, in part because of their long history and understanding of the digital media space and what's important to those companies," said Troy Brooks, chief executive officer, PipelineFX. "We know SGI has the right background and Intel's new multi-core architecture creates an ideal platform for a rendering solution that offers effective workflow management, excellent price performance and cost of ownership metrics. This caliber solution will appeal to a broad range of creative and technical managers."

PipelineFX's Qube! combines state-of-the-art techniques for batch queuing, distributed processing and render farm management. The software maximizes job throughput by distributing the millions of computational tasks that occur during the graphics rendering and software build processes. SGI is renowned for its years of experience in content management for editing, effects, and digital intermediates. The company's open heterogeneous operating system approach to data management makes it the ideal partner for PipelineFX.

Designed for multiple operating environments, Qube! interfaces directly to all the leading modeling and rendering applications including Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and Studio, Avid XSI (Softimage), Mental Images mental ray and Pixar Renderman. PipelineFX will debut the new solution at SIGGRAPH 2006 (Booth 2614).

Qube! is currently used for a wide variety of rendering applications, including data-intensive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and engineering analysis. The University of Hawaii Center for Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics is using Qube! to manage high-performance computation on an SGI® Altix® server as they sequence the papaya genome. Qube!'s first incarnation, written for the SGI® IRIX® OS, was used on the 1999 movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and is currently being used on major summer motion picture releases. Qube! is also a very important component of game development at the world's largest game studios worldwide and has been used on a number of their games.

"There are a number of benefits from coupling SGI's new Altix XE with Qube!," said Brooks. "A big advantage is that it's preconfigured for the user, so it's really a farm in a box, all set to go. For smaller studios that may not have a lot of technical resources to configure machines and initialize things, they can just plug it in, hook it up to their network and away they go. It's plug and play; a turnkey solution. Then depending on what they're doing, turnaround time can be cut tremendously. For example, at some of the top game companies, we saw artists' turnaround time - the time it took them to iterate their art assets - drop from three or four days to less than a minute or two. And that's not entirely due to our software, that's due to understanding the nature of pipelines and putting some effort into empowering artists to do those things. A big part of that is using our software to get that kind of iteration offline and allow the artists to keep working while those assets are being processed."

The new SGI Render Management Solution with Qube! will create that same level of performance enhancement based on managing the render farm environment as part of the complete workflow that has afforded SGI its reputation as the top-of-the-line data management and storage provider - in multiple configurations. SGI NAS solutions easily connect to existing network infrastructure to serve UNIX®, Windows®, Linux®, and Apple® clients. For customers with larger/faster data rendering and storage needs, SGI and PipelineFX offer the Render Management Solution running on an SGI® Altix® 4700 server, which is best suited for the big data set class of problems/applications.

"With the introduction of the Altix XE servers, and with partners like PipelineFX, SGI is now positioned to re-address the requirements of this important market segment: rendering and content creation," said Louise Ledeen, market segment manager, Media Industries, SGI. "Productivity is what makes a company successful as we have learned in recent years with designing content management infrastructures for post, broadcast and digital intermediate facilities."

This solution is designed to enable facilities to better manage resources, which will enable them to be more creative and productive -- overall to have a positive impact on their bottom line. For example, this solution will benefit the art and architecture university students working on their final semester project, or a group of scientists who are working under crunching deadlines because their grant proposals are due.

On the media side - because the deadlines are so ferocious - it's a matter of being able to know whether they're going to get their project in on time and under budget. Or do they need more resources? Do they need to purchase more storage or servers to get that job done? The Render Management Solution is an invaluable management tool that allows them to decide whether they can get the job done sooner if it's a fixed bid, or if there's another 20 shots that need to be done for a movie that's coming out, do they have the resources internally to bring that project in at a very high margin? The ability to know what they need and know that they can get it from a company as reputable as SGI, coupled with the knowledge that the system they're buying is scalable virtually in every direction, is true peace of mind.

Pricing and Availability
SGI unveiled SGI Altix XE, a new family of Linux OS-based servers and factory-integrated clusters powered by new Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors introduced today by Intel. Unlike competing systems, SGI Altix XE clusters are custom-configured to optimize leading applications, and are backed by SGI and its decades-long track record of successful customer deployments. SGI Altix XE cluster solutions can be ordered today. Base configuration pricing starts at less than $3,100 US List Price. (See "SGI Transforms Clusters into Solutions with New Altix XE Line Based on Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor").

For more information about SGI Altix XE x86 solutions visit http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/xe/.

SILICON GRAPHICS | The Source of Innovation and Discovery™
SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc. (OTC: SGID), is a leader in high-performance computing. SGI helps customers solve their computing challenges, whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, designing and manufacturing safer and more efficient cars and airplanes, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland security and defense, enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, or helping enterprises manage large data. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com.

Silicon Graphics, SGI, Altix, IRIX, the SGI cube and the SGI logo are registered trademarks, and The Source of Innovation and Discovery is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. PipelineFX and Qube! are trademarks of PipelineFX, LLC. Intel and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

The discussion in this news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including the impact of competitive products and pricing, the efforts of third parties in developing, supporting, and promoting their products, and the other risks detailed from time to time in the company's SEC reports, including the report on Form 10-Q and 10-K. Actual results may vary materially.