IRIX Runs on an Emulated SGI Origin 300

SGI’s Bedrock Generation Installs IRIX From a Blank Disk, Boots It to a Login on Two and Four Processors, and Reaches Eight Processors Across Two Chassis

THE MACHINE ROOM (September 25, 2026). The Origami project today announced that IRIX 6.5.30 runs on an emulated SGI Origin 300, the first machine of SGI’s R14000 and Bedrock generation to run the vendor’s operating system in emulation. The installer writes a blank disk over the network, the installed system boots to a console login, and two Origin 300 chassis joined by a NUMAlink cable come up as one eight-processor, one-gigabyte machine.

The Origin 300 is the 2000-era successor to the Origin 200 and Origin 2000. Its node controller is the Bedrock, which replaces the Hub of the earlier machines, and its processors are the 500 MHz R14000. The emulated machine is -M origin300: the R14000 processors, the Bedrock, the XBridge I/O controller, the L1 system controller that owns the console, and the base I/O chip, booting SGI’s stock IP35 firmware from its own flash.

From the Maintenance Menu to a Login

The installed disk boots from the firmware’s maintenance menu to a login in about ninety seconds, with both processors enabled. The console reads:

IRIX Release 6.5 IP35 Version 07202013 System V - 64 Bit
Copyright 1987-2006 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
[...]
IRIS console login:

The same disk was written by IRIX’s own network installer on the emulated machine, starting from nothing, carrying the full package transfer through to the installer’s report that “Installations and removals were successful.” A four-processor Origin 300 runs the same firmware to ALL DIAGS PASSED, and SGI’s online diagnostics, including a thirty-minute pandora and an hour-long torpedo, run on both populations.

Two Chassis, Eight Processors

Two Origin 300 chassis, each with its own Bedrock, I/O board and L1 controller, are joined by one emulated NUMAlink cable. The firmware discovers both, reports 8 CPUs on 2 nodes found and ALL DIAGS PASSED, and IRIX boots across the pair to a login. Its hardware inventory reads:

CPU: MIPS R14000 Processor Chip Revision: 2.4
FPU: MIPS R14010 Floating Point Chip Revision: 2.4
Processor 0: 500 MHZ IP35
[... processors 1 to 6 ...]
Processor 7: 500 MHZ IP35
Main memory size: 1024 Mbytes

and the kernel’s hardware graph holds both modules, 001c01 and 001c02. That run was taken on the change that has since landed on the project’s main line, not on the main line itself.

How It Got There

The firmware demanded an exact description of the machine, from the empty processor sockets to the byte its Ethernet address sits at, and two processors had to be taught to meet at their boot rendezvous under the emulator’s threaded timing. The last wall before the eight-processor login was a register window the model had forwarded to the wrong place, so that IRIX’s heartbeat light masked another processor’s interrupts. The project’s engineering notes tell both stories.

About This Project

Origami is a permanent fork of QEMU that emulates SGI’s MIPS/IRIX ccNUMA machines. It exists because nothing else emulated them, and because SGI’s firmware, IRIX and field diagnostics are the strongest available witness that the model is faithful. A run on it is evidence about the model, never about the silicon. It ships nothing and sells nothing. It is a research and preservation project, unaffiliated with Silicon Graphics.

SGI, IRIX, Origin, MIPS, R14000 and NUMAlink are trademarks of their respective owners, and this project is unaffiliated with any of them. No SGI code is reproduced in the fork.