Editing Pixar Image Computer (section)

=== Demise and legacy ===
In 1990, the Pixar Image Computer was defining the state-of-the-art in commercial image processing. Despite this, the government decided that the per-seat cost was still too high for mass deployment and to wait for the next generation systems to achieve cost reductions. This decision was the catalyst for Pixar to lay off its hardware engineers and sell the imaging business. There were no high volume buyers in any industry. Fewer than 300 Pixar Image Computers were ever sold.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |title=Pixar Image Computer |url=https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery/equipment/pixar-image-computer |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200309075156/https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/pixar-image-computer |archive-date=9 March 2020 |website=Rhode Island Computer Museum}}</ref>

{{quote| text="It was built to be part of a pipeline, but as we developed it we realized we were competing with [[Moore's law]] with CPU and we probably couldn't get far enough ahead of it to justify it so we actually stopped the hardware effort."| sign=[[Edwin_Catmull|Ed Catmull]], President of Pixar<ref>{{Cite web |url= https://www.fxguide.com/featured/pixars-renderman-turns-25/ |title= Pixar's RenderMan turns 25 |date= 25 July 2013 |access-date= 2019-04-21}}</ref> | source=|title=}}

The Pixar computer business was sold to Vicom Systems in 1990 for $2,000,000. Vicom Systems filed for [[Chapter 11]] within a year afterwards.

Many of the lessons learned from the Pixar Image Computer made it into the Low Cost Workstation (LCWS) and Commercial Analyst Workstation (CAWS) program guidelines in the early and mid 1990s. The government mass deployment that drove the PII-9 development occurred in the late 1990s, in a program called Integrated Exploitation Capability (IEC).