Comments on: SiCortex Co-Founder on Intel and Shutting Down

By: Ilan

Ilan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:35:04 +0000

It appears Linux Fund is currently preparing to bid on Sicortex’s PathScale software. They are accepting donations towards the bid at: http://linuxfund.org/pathscale/

More information at:
http://www.codestrom.com/wandering/2009/06/help-liberate-proprietary-code.html

By: foo

foo — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:09:27 +0000

One of their investors was really low on funds and couldn’t participate in the latest round of funding that SiCortex needed. Then all the other investors pulled out of the round, too. SiCortex’s sales were strong and growing, but hadn’t reached profitability yet, so without the round of funding they couldn’t go forward. It really had nothing to do with competition.

By: Chuck Ritter

Chuck Ritter — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:23:13 +0000

Erin asks if “Xeon and Opteron chips making competitive life too difficult”…

Well, if not x86 itself, the price and availability of Infiniband for commodity x86 definitely changed since 2002. It is much, much cheaper. Also, Electricity price gyrations have smoothed… Big market players have competed more aggressively for the HPC business… Things have changed.

That said, I’m still a little surprised by the closure. Maybe someone will still step in and make a go of it. Someone with not only the marketing department, but the reputation it takes to sell to big systems: IBM, Hitachi, Fujitsi, etc. If SGI and Sun have value, SiCortex should find a home.

By: Matt Reilly

Matt Reilly — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:35:44 +0000

Stacey, I should have made clear that the first generation product cost way less than $68million — I think the background noise in my office must have confused things — The company built the first round system with the A round funding of $21M. We had working prototypes at that point. The company then raised an additional $21M B round to finance production and sales activities. There was a later extension to the B round and some debt financing as well. The key point is that the SiCortex team built the V1 product for way less than some dot com startups spend (spent?) on launching a website.

But then again, it isn’t like we were inventing the concept of selling dog food by mail… ;)

By: John West

John West — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:39:09 +0000

You and I had part of this same conversation Stacey, but I disagree with Matt that his system wasn’t a proprietary design. Yes, it was based on the very common MIPS core, but the system on a chip they constructed was custom, and this was part of their selling point. The engineering that went into that chip contributed to expenses that someone who builds a system around a non-proprietary core just doesn’t have. Matt’s right in that this leads to little diversity in the computing gene pool, and that isn’t a good thing, but that doesn’t make his system non-proprietary.

Someone in HPC marketing left an interesting comment on the article on my site to the effect that SiCortex couldn’t market itself to “save its life”. Here’s part of what they said: “Their story never resonated – their value proposition was weak and off target – and the perceived ego of the company was somewhat out of control – and got in the way of good, solid marketing.”

I’m not an HPC marketing guy, but this does resonate with me as an HPC customer.

By: SiCortex Co-Founder on Intel and Shutting Down - Gigaom.com « AddingInfo.com

Sat, 30 May 2009 02:31:35 +0000

[...] themselves and the processor cores and the memory, it wasn’t proprietary. Given that it … Read Full Post: SiCortex Co-Founder on Intel and Shutting Down – Gigaom.com Related Info:SiCortex Co-Founder on Intel and Shutting Down – CNN MoneySiCortex is shutting down – [...]

By: Erin in Rowayton

Erin in Rowayton — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:42:26 +0000

Alex Guinness said in the Lavender Hill Mob “It’s so nonsensical that it must make sense”, but I’m finding the dissolution of SiCortex hard to understand. Please help me understand the economic reality. For example, are clusters using new versions of Xeon and Opteron chips making competitive life too difficult??? SiCortex’s grand challenge and great people seemed on the cusp of success with a group ofsolid VCs? Please clarify. Thanks, Erin