IRIX

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Stands for: Silicon Graphics' Unix for MIPS workstations and servers, 1988 to 2006

Silicon Graphics' Unix for its MIPS workstations and servers, System V with BSD extensions, named from release 3.0 in 1988 and ended with 6.5.30 in August 2006; the birthplace of XFS and OpenGL.

IRIX, a portmanteau of IRIS and UNIX, is the discontinued operating system Silicon Graphics developed to run on its proprietary MIPS workstations and servers; it is based on Unix System V with BSD extensions, and both the XFS file system and the OpenGL graphics API were originally developed by SGI for it. SGI began using the IRIX name with the 1988 release 3.0 for the IRIS 4D series, earlier releases being identified only as 4D1-2.2 and the like, and before the IRIS 4D the company had shipped GL2, based on UniSoft's UniPlus System V. The final release was 6.5.30 on 16 August 2006; updates up to 6.5.22 were free downloads and later ones required a support contract. On 6 September 2006 SGI announced the end of the MIPS and IRIX product lines, production ended on 29 December 2006 with final deliveries in March 2007, and support ended in December 2013. Much of its core technology, XFS above all, was open-sourced and ported by SGI to Linux, which is the operating system SGI's Itanium machines ran instead.

Origins. SGI began using the name IRIX in the 1988 release 3.0 of its operating system for the IRIS 4D series of workstations and servers; previous releases carried only a release number prefixed 4D1-, such as 4D1-2.2, and the prefix stayed in official documentation afterwards. Before the IRIS 4D, SGI bundled the GL2 operating system, based on UniSoft UniPlus System V Unix, with its proprietary MEX windowing system. IRIX 3.x was System V Release 3 with 4.3BSD enhancements and the 4Sight windowing system; later releases moved to the SVR4-derived base the infobox records as SVR4.1ES, with a POSIX userland and the IRIX Interactive Desktop.

What it gave the industry. XFS, the file system that now ships in every Linux distribution, was written for IRIX, as was OpenGL, the graphics API that SGI reformed out of its proprietary IRIS GL in 1992 and licensed to its own competitors under an industry review board. Both outlived the system they were built for; the Silicon Graphics record on the industry timeline tells how OpenGL came to be licensed and how an SGI Crimson running the fsn file navigator ended up in Jurassic Park.

Decline and end. Updates from 6.5.x to the 6.5.22 maintenance release were available as free downloads; 6.5.23 and higher required an active Silicon Graphics support contract. A 2001 Computerworld review found IRIX in a critical state as SGI moved its effort to Linux and to the Windows-based Visual Workstations, and MIPS and IRIX customers persuaded SGI to continue supporting the platform through 2006. On 6 September 2006 an SGI press release announced the end of the MIPS and IRIX product lines; production ended on 29 December 2006, with final deliveries in March 2007 except by special arrangement, and support ended in December 2013 with no further updates. The final release, 6.5.30, is dated 16 August 2006. SGI's Itanium systems ran SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with SGI enhancements, and QuickTransit let old MIPS/IRIX applications run on them in emulation.

For the reader of this glossary. IRIX is the Unix of the film studio and the wind tunnel rather than of the data centre, which is why a network engineer meets it rarely and remembers it well; it is one of the four vendor Unixes, with HP-UX, Solaris and AIX, that defined what a workstation network looked like before Linux, and as the system that gave Linux its best file system.

Also known as: sgi irix, irix 6.5, iris 4d, mips irix

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