I was searching for some images of SGI render farms & stumbled across this little gem.
http://static.howstuffworks.com/mpeg/cfx-machines.mpg
Timberoz>Craig
http://static.howstuffworks.com/mpeg/cfx-machines.mpg
Timberoz>Craig
SGI: Video
Old School Render Farms
I will show it to my wife so she won't complain about the noise in the basement
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Good find, great video. Dear lord, how much must that have cost back then!
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eMGee wrote: Good find, great video. Dear lord, how much must that have cost back then!
thought the same
and why all those workstations instead of a few origins or challenges?
r-a-c.de
Because apparently it's better for everybody to have their own workstation than a bunch of multi-seat machines; they do have onyxes for the back end. Spared no expense
Google: Don't Be Evil. Apple: Don't Be Greedy. Microsoft: Don't Be Stupid.
I wonder if it'd be, or rather would've been, cheaper to buy a bunch of desktop units (like
O2
s, the
Indigo²
s were most likely ‘left-overs’; I'm willing to bet) than just a few full-sized rack systems. I mean, considering in the late 1990s low-end
O2s
still cost over $ 10K!
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Compared to the Onyx the CRM graphics in O2 is a bad joke, so I doubt SGI really had to worry about competing with themselves there.
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foetz wrote:eMGee wrote: Good find, great video. Dear lord, how much must that have cost back then!
thought the same
and why all those workstations instead of a few origins or challenges?
Looks like the workstations are for the creation. They probably went with Octanes for the artists who did mostly wireframe and solids (most likely with SI or SSI) and saved the Onyxes for the people who needed texturing or a "realtime" frame-rate (showing progress to the studio reps). The O2s I'm not sure of - perhaps for the texturing people?
In addition to the cheaper hardware the software licenses might have cost less as well, similar to the Discreet apps being cheaper on "smaller" boxes. I know Boeing looks to have had smaller boxes for the beginning work (Indy/Indigo2 Solid/Octane SI/SSI) and bigger boxes (texture-equipped IMPACTs and Onyxes) for the later stages.
Looks like they had a Linuxbox renderfarm, or maybe they used Origins/Challenges there as well. The SGI magic wouldn't have been as critical there, since it's just number crunching.
"Brakes??? What Brakes???"
(single-CM)
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