Q A: SGI leader looks for Altix OEMs When the Top500 list of the world's most powerful computers is published Monday, the 10,240 processor "Columbia" supercomputer that Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) recently built for NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration's) Ames Research Center is expected to be the number-two system on the list. Columbia is a much-needed success for SGI, which has been struggling to reclaim customers lost during an ill-fated foray into the Windows market during the late 1990s. Since taking the reins of the company in 1999, Bob Bishop, an 18-year SGI veteran, has refocused SGI on its core technical markets, and bet the company's future on the three core technologies in its Altix line of servers: the Linux operating system, Intel Corp.'s Itanium processor architecture, and SGI's own NUMAflex system design. With NUMAflex, SGI has been able to scale Linux to unprecedented levels.