There’s a hot formula for hardware start-ups these days: Take standard components that are declining steadily in price, and offer proprietary chips and software that make them work much better.

That’s the path being pursued by Virident Systems, a Silicon Valley company that plans to offer its own server systems as well as sell technology to much larger server makers.

The company’s chief executive is Raj Parekh, who held executive titles at Sun Microsystems (JAVA) in the 1990s and also was a co-founder of Silicon Graphics (SGIC). He traces Virident’s existence to the fact that the design of most servers stacking up in computer rooms evolved years before the Internet. They often have massive number-crunching power, Parekh says, but aren’t particularly good at the main thing they are purchased to do–-answer Web queries.

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Silicon Graphics (SGIC) shares are up sharply on thin trading this morning after the company posted results last night for its fiscal fourth quarter ended June 27. The company also named Anthony Grillo, the CEO of American Securities Advisors, as chairman; he replaces Kevin Katari, of Watershed Asset Management, who resigned from the board. Also leaving the board is Chun Won Yi from investment firm Monarch Alternative Capital. As of June 30, Watershed held a 13 percent stake in the company, while Monarch owned 26.7 percent. Grillo has been on the board since October 2006.

Silicon Graphics reports some of the most complicated financial statements you will ever read; their latest quarter release is 26 pages long. Combine that with the fact that there are no analysts publishing on the stock and you have a set of results that are not easy to interpret. But here’s what I can tell you …

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