Infostor has an interesting article on effects studios’ gradual migration away from direct attach storage (DAS) to new networked storage solutions. If you’re not that up on the difference between DAS, NAS, and SAN, this is an excellent introduction with some great explanatory diagrams.

When it comes to the storage infrastructure underpinning your digital content operations, you have three choices: direct-attached storage (DAS), network-attached storage (NAS), or storage area networks (SANs). And in studio environments, the trend is clearly away from DAS toward networked storage architectures such as NAS or SAN.

You can read the full article here.

It looks like SGI have not been able to comply with the listing requirements since the last NASDAQ warning, and have now been issued with a notice that they will be delisted on the 12th March.

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (the “Company”) (NASDAQ: SGIC) announced today that it received a notification letter from The Nasdaq Stock Market on March 3, 2009, indicating that trading of the Company’s common stock will be suspended at the opening of business on March 12, 2009 due to a failure to comply with the market value of publicly held shares requirement for continued listing set forth in Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(3)(B). The Company has requested a hearing before a Nasdaq Listing Qualification Panel to review the Staff Determination. A hearing request will stay the suspension of the Company’s securities and the filing of the Form 25-NSE pending the Panel’s decision.

With many solid government contracts, and some significant large investors who clearly still see the value of R&D at Silicon Graphics, is now the time for the company to take itself private? Or is a merger with NVidia going to be on the cards?

Bad news – more layoffs at Silicon Graphics. This time 9% of the workforce – 120 people. Coming hard on the heels of the announcement that SGI have landed the DoD infrastructure refresh deal, this must be an especially bitter pill for those let go to have to swallow.

The Register has some more details, as well as more rumours and speculation that Silicon Graphics will finally ditch Itanium and stick with 64bit Xeon Nehalem chips. I’ve discussed their Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) before, and I reckon they’ll probably a much more favourable price point (for both SGI and it’s customers) in the big Altix gear.