Rackable takes SGI name after purchase

The datacentre hardware specialist Rackable Systems is to adopt SGI as its new name across the globe, after completing its acquisition of Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Rackable announced the move in a statement on Monday. Its $42.5m (£29m) purchase of the supercomputing company was granted court approval on 30 April and closed on 8 May.

For the deal, Rackable created a subsidiary called Silicon Graphics International. That subsidiary then acquired the assets and liabilities of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Rackable will now be known as "a Silicon Graphics International entity", and Silicon Graphics International will be branded as SGI.

The new SGI's portfolio will include high-performance products for medium- and large-scale datacentres and high-performance computing (HPC). The board of the company is composed of senior executives from both Rackable and the former Silicon Graphics, Inc, with Rackable chief Mark Barrenechea remaining the company's chief executive.

In a blog post on Monday, Barrenechea wrote that the Rackable name would live on as the brand for SGI's x86 cluster compute products. "Rackable will join our other industry-recognised brands — such as ICE Cube, Altix, InfiniteStorage, CloudRack, MicroSlice, Origin, and VUE — to comprise the new SGI," he wrote.

Rackable was founded in 1999, but Silicon Graphics, Inc goes back to 1981, when it was founded by a group of Stanford University alumni. Silicon Graphics, which has major contracts with clients such as the US Department of Defense, went into Chapter 11 administration at the start of April this year, and was immediately snapped up by Rackable.