After posting successive quarterly losses, SGI earlier this year cut 12 percent of its workforce, or about 250 employees. It then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and quickly received court approval for a reorganization and $70 million in financing.

Analysts have cited competition from low-cost x86 vendors as one of SGI's key problems. "The problem is that you need to sell a lot of those kinds [low-cost] boxes," said Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc. in Nashua, N.H. Even so, "SGI probably wishes they had gone down the x86 route" earlier, he said.