SGI's Numaflex technology, a shared-memory architecture that allows memory to be shared across multiple processors and the large Intel Itanium cache, is "the key to the effectiveness of the Columbia Constellation design," he said. "There are other options out there for both capacity and capability computing, but overall the community would lose a major option in designing their computer centers if SGI failed to regain its footing."

SGI systems make up nearly half of the 3,000 CPUs available at the U.K.'s University of Manchester Research Computing center, according to Terry Hewitt, its director.

Hewitt met with McKenna soon after he took over at SGI. "He has a good understanding of the product range," said Hewitt. "I was very impressed with his competency."

As for the bankruptcy filing, Hewitt said he is concerned -- and wants more details from the company. But "there's nothing to panic about. The new CEO has put in changes that should make the difference and he needs some time for those to take full effect."

Brian Ropers-Huilman, director of High Performance Computing at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, is concerned about specialized support needs available only through the company. The school purchased an SGI system, a Prism Extreme visualization system with 32 processors, about a year ago.