Opteron hero Newisys goes titsup

The start-up that ignited the Opteron revolution has collapsed.

One-time server darling Newisys is officially closing up shop. Its parent company Sanmina SCI this month told the Texas Workforce Commission that 87 Newisys staff will be let go as the company winds down. Newisys, based in Austin, has been part of Sanmina since 2003.

Newisys generated a ton of buzz when it opened in 2000 as the Opteron-based server start-up with the most street cred and potential. It collected some former IBM executives who jumped on Opteron before it was cool and hoped to attract Tier 1 server makers to the Newisys designs, once the chip took off as they expected.

Some of the big server makers did dabble with Newisys gear for a short while and then decided to make their own hardware. That left Newisys in an awkward spot.

Under Sanmina's watch, Newisys worked on large Opteron-based system designs and even expanded its lineup to include Xeon-based boxes and storage. Meanwhile, Newisys founder and CEO Phil Hester jumped ship in 2005 to take on the CTO post at AMD. ®