120 more employees laid off at SGI

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Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Register is reporting today that another 9% of SGI’s workforce has been laid off

SGI logoSupercomputer maker Silicon Graphics has let go 120 more employees, nine per cent of its workforce, in an effort to cut costs as its revenues decline.

These cuts come hot on the heels of a 15 per cent layoff announced in mid-December, when SGI slashed 15 per cent of its 1,500-strong workforce, eliminating 225 positions. After the latest rounds of cuts, SGI has approximately 1,155 employees. That latest round cost the company about $3m in severance and related charges, according to the 8K filing, and SGI expects the layoffs to be completed by March 27.

No press release on this from SGI, but SGI did file an 8-K with the SEC yesterday explaining that they expect to spend $3M on the move which apparently started last week

On February 26, 2009, the Company took action to eliminate approximately 120 employee positions or approximately 9% of the Company’s global workforce in an ongoing effort to refine its focus, streamline its operations and reduce costs.

The Company expects to record a charge of approximately $3 million for severance and other employee termination costs in connection with the restructuring, all of which will result in future cash expenditures. The workforce reduction is expected to be substantially completed by March 27, 2009.

The Register also passes on as yet unconfirmed information about support for future Itanium gear from Intel

One Reg reader, who is an SGI customer, reacting to the bashing that Unisys gave Itanium in February as it promotes its Xeon-based servers (co-designed with NEC), told us that SGI is telling customers who sign non-disclosure agreements that it will not be supporting Tukwila and that SGI is offering “attractive upgrades though”. SGI would clearly be in a much better position if Intel had put 64-bit Xeon chips into the field years early, or had adopted the 64-bit Opterons from Advanced Micro Devices as a stepping stone to future Xeons, as rival Cray had done.

The story also goes on to summarize the DoD HPC Mod buy that was recently announced, which is odd (speaking as someone who is a part of that program — we don’t often get covered in that kind of detail in the press).