Silicon Graphics Improves Price/Performance of OCTANE Power Desktop Line New OCTANE CADduo Option Enables Two Customers to Use the Same System Simultaneously

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (November 4, 1997) -- Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: SGI) today announced OCTANETM CADduo, a new option for OCTANETM users. The OCTANE CADduo option enables two users to work on one OCTANE system at the same time, thereby increasing end-user functionality and decreasing the total cost per seat. With two computer-aided design (CAD) seats per OCTANE, system administration and support costs are also greatly reduced. Now two engineers can use an OCTANE CADduo to model components, and at the end of the day, bring the entire assembly together on one machine for review. For two simultaneous users, OCTANE CADduo delivers the industry-leading performance of the OCTANE workstation at a lower hardware cost per seat. The enormous throughput of the OCTANE workstation's crossbar architecture allows these two users to work at full speed without delays or interruptions. For the single user, OCTANE CADduo is an ideal large assembly review station, capable of interactively handling the full assembly. By sharing the large amounts of computing hardware required for solids modeling, OCTANE CADduo users leverage their hardware investment in ways never before possible. For example, instead of having two standard CAD seats with 128MB of memory each, OCTANE CADduo users can share a 256MB memory space, thereby making better use of the available memory. The unique multi-user capability of IRIXTM, Silicon Graphics' UNIX® implementation, includes a sophisticated scheduler to efficiently allocate system resources between the two users. The IRIX operating system also dynamically allocates memory and CPU capacity to whichever user requires it. Availability Shipping this quarter, the OCTANE CADduo option provides OCTANE users an additional 128MB of memory, 4GB hard disk, OCTANETM/SI graphics board, PCI card cage, PCI card with Ethernet and keyboard connectors, 20-inch monitor and keyboard, for a second user. The OCTANE family comes standard with 100Base-TX/10Base-T Ethernet; analog and digital audio I/O; external speakers; one or two MIPS® R10000TM microprocessors; 64MB, 128MB or 256MB of memory; 2GB or 4GB hard disk; a 20-inch monitor and one of three graphics options -- SI, SSI or MXI. Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a leading supplier of high-performance interactive computing systems. The company offers the broadest range of products in the industry -- from low-end desktop workstations to servers and high-end Cray® supercomputers. Silicon Graphics also markets MIPS microprocessor designs, Alias|WavefrontTM entertainment and design software and other software products. The company's key markets include manufacturing, government, science and industries, communications and entertainment sectors. Silicon Graphics and its subsidiaries have offices throughout the world and headquarters in Mountain View, California. Silicon Graphics and the Silicon Graphics logo are registered trademarks, and OCTANE, OCTANE/SI and IRIX are trademarks, of Silicon Graphics, Inc. MIPS is a registered trademark, and R10000 is a trademark, of MIPS Technologies, Inc. Cray is a registered trademark of Cray Research, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Alias is a registered trademark, and Alias|Wavefront is a trademark of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. UNIX is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited.