Silicon Graphics Hardware / Software

Silicon Graphics has a special place in my heart. Seeing the SGI Indy do what it was doing - with stereo shutter glasses as well! - way back in 1995 likely cemented my trajectory into software engineering.

Overview

I’m trying to collate the random bits and pieces that exist out there on the web in general. There’s a lot of PDFs spread all over the place.

Hardware

• indy/notes - SGI Indy Hardware, Software and Platform Documentation

CPU Documentation

These are available, well, everywhere, but to make my own life easier I’m going to try and collate all of the MIPS CPUs used in SGI hardware in one place.

• cpus/R4300_datasheet.Rev0.3.pdf
• cpus/R4600_Prod_OV.pdf
• cpus/r4000.pdf
• cpus/r4600.pdf
• cpus/r5000.pdf

Filesystems

I haven’t found anything describing EFS, but there’s bits and pieces about XFS.

• fs/sgixfs.pdf - Scalability in the XFS filesystem, Adam Sweeny (SGI) - Usenix 1996

• fs/xfs_filesystem_structure.pdf - XFS Filesystem Structure (2nd Edition), SGI, 2006
• fs/xfs_filesystem_structure_2025.pdf - XFS Algorithms and Data Structures (3rd Edition), April 2025 update

• fs/getting_started_with_xfs.pdf - Getting Started with XFS, SGI, 1994

• fs/xfs93/notes - Initial 1993 XFS design documents, released by SGI during the Linux XFS open source effort

Software

• misc/sgi-driver-guide-007-0911-050.pdf - SGI/IRIX Driver Guide

Misc / Non-SGI

And this one isn’t from SGI, but I found it a good read.

• fs/xfs.pdf - Failure Analysis of SGI XFS File System, Tamma, Venugopalan