SGI Indigo

SGI Indigo

The Indigo, introduced as the IRIS Indigo, was a line of workstation computers developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI).

The Indigo was considered one of the most capable graphics workstations of its era, and was essentially peerless in the realm of hardware-accelerated three-dimensional graphics rendering. For use as a graphics workstation, the Indigo was equipped with a two-dimensional framebuffer or, for use as a 3d-graphics workstation, with the Elan graphics subsystem including one to four Geometry Engines (GEs).

The Indigo was a visually pleasing design, based on a simple cube motif in indigo hue. Graphics and other peripheral expansions were accomplished via the GIO32 expansion bus.

The Indigo was superseded generally by the SGI Indigo2 (and in the low-cost market segment by the SGI Indy), although Indigos remain useful among some specialties even into the 2000s.