[phire]

> The standard api was pretty much OpenGL

Good point. It is the software APIs are where you do see the strong SGI influence. It's not OpenGL, but it's clearly based on their experience with OpenGL. The resulting API is quite a bit better than other 5th gen consoles.

It's only the hardware (especially RDP) that has little direct connection to other SGI hardware.

[the-rc]

The hardware folks came mostly from outside SGI and were picked especially because they had worked on cheaper systems before.