One SGI system user is Brian Ropers-Huilman, director of High Performance Computing at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. About a year ago, the university purchased a Prism Extreme visualization system with 32-processors from SGI.

"Obviously, I'm going to have concerns over future support," said Ropers-Huilman, who noted that his SGI system has specialized support needs only available through the company.

"I don't feel that they are going to flat-out abandon their customers at this point," said Ropers-Huilman. "I have to believe that they are going to have a strategy."

SGI has many academic and research users, but the company's technology is used at many compute-intensive companies such as Ford Motor Co., which last year purchased SGI storage and computer systems for three of its research centers, according to SGI.

Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT in Hayward, Calif., said many of SGI's high-performance customers may have the skills in-house to maintain the systems. He also believes that there are enough SGI customers to encourage third-party support.