Editing Silicon Graphics (section)

==User base and core market==
Conventional wisdom holds that SGI's core market has traditionally been [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] visual effects studios. In fact, SGI's largest [[revenue]] has always been generated by government and defense applications, energy, and scientific and technical computing.<ref>Silicon Graphics [http://www.sgi.com/company_info/federal/sewp.html "SGI SEWP Contracts"] Retrieved November 11, 2011.</ref> In one case Silicon Graphics' largest single sale ever was to the [[United States Postal Service]]. SGI's servers powered an [[artificial intelligence]] program to mechanically read, tag and sort the mail (hand-written and block) at a number of USPS's key mail centers. The rise of cheap yet powerful commodity workstations running [[Linux]], [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] and [[Mac OS X]], and the availability of diverse professional software for them, effectively pushed SGI out of the visual effects industry in all but the most [[niche market]]s.