Silicon Graphics, the incredible shrinking workstation maker, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to news wires.

In court papers filed today, SGI said it had been "challenged by delays in introducing new technology, a focus on more specialised markets and more intense competition from larger rivals", Reuters reports.

Chapter 11 is intended to give companies breathing space by keeping creditors at bay while they restructure. But SGI's historic business - supplying expensive workstations to movie production houses (latterly based on Intel's Itanic chip) - is under extreme pressure. The graphics may be great, but then so are Nvidia and ATI these days; and AMD and Intel server farms running Linux are so much cheaper. ®

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