Weta Digital Grows Cluster 209
Korgan writes "A little over 3 years after their last upgrade, Weta Digital has just added another 250 more blade servers to their render farm to help with the final renderings of King Kong. From the article: "The IBM Xeon blade servers, each with two 3.4 gigahertz processors and 8 gigabytes of memory, are housed at the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre in central Wellington. They have been added to the centre's existing bank of 1144 Intel 2.8GHz processors, boosting its power by 50 per cent to create a supercomputer with the equivalent power of nearly 15,000 PCs. The servers run the Red Hat version of the open-source Linux operating system. The purchase means the centre is back among the 100 largest supercomputing clusters in the world." And all that computing power is still available for hire when Peter Jackson isn't using it."
Explain this "new" math to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Total processors: 1644.
Now, the Xeons do a bit better than the run-of-the-mill P4, but 10x faster? No way.
For that matter, they don't run faster at all. They just do somewhat better (as in, 10-25%, not 913%) on certain types of memory-heavy tasks.
Someone either made a major typo or pulled numbers from their netherregion...
Nonsense Statement (Score:3, Insightful)
Such statements are utter nonsense. First, 15,000 PC's - what kind of PC? (dual core AMD, I think not). Second, how do you measure power ? (is this for their applications, or some other metric) If they ran the numbers they would find the cluster rather typical - unless there is more to the story.
Yes they have a a lot of processors, however, lots-o-processors != supercomputer
Re:* sigh * (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And to think... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comparisons with Star Wars aren't helpful. King Kong has more fur. Rendering fur is hard work.
There is no easy way to compare that. It's highly subjective, even when using the most basic comparison: number of shots. I believe Ep. 3 had 2400+ shots in the final film, although about 2800+ were rendered (about 400 were edited out). Don't remember how many shots King Kong has, though I think it's at least 1,500 though less than 2400. Then you get to the subjective part. for both films how many shots have major 3D work, how many it's mostly compositing, roto and paint, how many are miniature mostly, how many are mixed more or less equaly, how many minutes of digital character animation, etc. So when discussing those issues it's usuallyt a good idea to get as specific as possible and even then you can argue both sides.
It's probably better to wait for the Cinefex issue in January.
http://www.cinefex.com/magazine/next/next.html [cinefex.com]
Re:* sigh * (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends on the CG. If I don't notice that it's CG I tend to like it. If it looks like CG I tend to groan.
Jurassic park was extremely well done CG and I loved it. Spiderman was, well, cartoony at best (but a good story and Kirsten Dunst go a long way). In Gone in Sixty Seconds they should have just used real cars in all the scenes. There was no excuse for CG shenanegans. But the New York scene in AI was flawless and would have been impossible to film in scale models alone.
Notice a trend? If the director is a master of visuals and refuses to accept compromise (just try to tell Spielberg "that's the best I can do") then your CG is gonna work. If your level of visual excellence is better exemplified by Xena the Warrior Princess then you may just be willing to settle.
I don't mean to bash Raimi. I loved a lot of his stuff, including Spiderman. But did any of you really think Spiderman's level of CG excellence met the level of Spielberg? Directors and producers need to be more demanding of their digital special effects. They should reject mediocre work as readily as wire work with, well, visible wires.
TW
Re:Distributed computing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:tangent: "single-blade PCs" are also the future (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny, my first computer fit in a keyboard (Atari 800XL) then the one after that (Amiga 500) then the one after that (Amiga 1200). wait a sec...
Re:Export restrictions? (Score:3, Insightful)
Eh? New Zealand has more than Peter Jackson. For example, Roger Donaldson who is about to premiere "The Fastest Indian" starring Anthony Hopkins, playing a New Zealand character, filmed in New Zealand and to be premiered in New Zealand. Or Niki Caro of "Whale Rider" fame. Or Jane Campion who directed "The Piano" amongst other films. Or Lee Tamahori who's directing credits include "Once were Warriors", an episode of "The Sopranos" and even the James Bond film "Die another Day". Or Andrew Adamson who directed Shrek, Shrek2 and the upcoming "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe". All New Zealanders.
Not only that but Peter Jackson is much more than "Lord of the Rings", his directing credits also include many films such as "The Frighteners" and the Oscar nominated "Heavenly Creatures".
And those are just some of the big names I picked off the top of my head.
New Zealand has a lot of directorial talent for it's paltry 4 million population.