Documentaries to Watch If You Love Silicon Graphics (SGI)

Before the sleek minimalism of today's tech, there was the wild, bold, and powerful era of Silicon Graphics. For those who remember SGI's iconic workstations or its impact on everything from movies to science, here’s what to watch.

The Pixar Story (2007)

You can't talk about SGI's impact without talking about Pixar. This documentary chronicles the animation studio's journey from a small computer graphics division of Lucasfilm to a global entertainment powerhouse. While the focus is on characters and storytelling,

the technological backbone of that creative leap was SGI. Pixar was a flagship SGI customer, and their groundbreaking work in films like "Toy Story" was made possible by the raw 3D processing power of SGI's systems. The film is an essential watch to understand what SGI's technology unlocked: a complete revolution in filmmaking and animation that we still feel today.

Code Rush (2000)

This documentary is a direct look at the SGI diaspora. After founding SGI, the legendary Jim Clark left to start Netscape Communications, taking a band of brilliant SGI engineers with him. "Code Rush" captures a frenzied, pivotal year inside Netscape as its engineers race to open-source their browser to compete with Microsoft. It's a raw, caffeinated time capsule of the dot-com boom, showing the intense work culture and the personalities that defined the era. For SGI fans, it’s a fascinating look at what the company's talent did next, applying the same world-changing ambition to the nascent web.

General Magic (2018)

While not directly about SGI, this film is its perfect spiritual companion. "General Magic" tells the story of a secretive, wildly ambitious Apple spin-off from the early 90s that tried to invent the smartphone a decade and a half too early. The company ultimately failed, but its alumni went on to create the iPhone, Android, and eBay. This documentary perfectly captures the intoxicating, hubristic, and brilliant culture of that specific slice of Silicon Valley history that SGI also inhabited. It’s a story of visionary ideas colliding with the limits of technology at the time—a narrative SGI enthusiasts will find deeply familiar.

Valley of the Boom (2019)

This six-part National Geographic miniseries blends scripted drama with documentary interviews to tell the story of the 90s tech explosion, focusing on the browser wars between Netscape and Microsoft. Since Netscape was the brainchild of SGI founder Jim Clark and staffed by SGI alumni, its story is a critical chapter in the broader SGI saga. The series vividly recreates the atmosphere of the time, from the excitement of the Netscape IPO to the brutal corporate battle with Microsoft. It contextualizes the competitive landscape that SGI veterans were thrown into and explains why the web, rather than high-end graphics, became the new center of the tech universe.