During production of Finding Nemo, we started using Linux boxes in addition to SGIs.
Why?

3D painting software we wrote for laying out coral was written in C++ using templates, and the debug info was too large for IRIX, but was debuggable on Linux.

Was this a 32 bit vs. 64 bit issue?

No.

IRIX reserved half the address space for the kernel, while Linux only did a quarter.

So on Linux, we had 3GB, and the symbols fit.

It was a 32 bit show, both machines had 4GB max.

Plenty for Finding Nemo.