On Monday 04 June 2001 14:08, Derek Glidden wrote:
> Linux is a great boon to
> the grunts because they can get a real platform, but still make the
> beancounters happy by being able to base that platform on a $5000
> PC-class workstation instead of a $25000 SGI workstation. And it's a LOT
> cheaper to build a big renderfarm out of high-end Intel or Alpha-class
> CPUs than it is to build one out of SGI or Sun machines, and with tools
> like Beowulf and MOSIX, it starts to look a lot smarter as well.
So does this mean that the Intel CISC architecture has caught up with the SGI
and (Solaris) RISC architecture? I have only seen SGI workstations from afar,
but allways kind of lusted after them especially when I was doing a lot of
cad work. Also I thought that SGI in particular paid a lot of attention to
the video display and put a lot of power into that...
Maybe it's the combo of the two (Unix on Intel) that does it. I would think
that it made it a lot easier to port the software, since most of it was
already 'nix of some sort. Anyone have any direct experience comparing SGI to
Intel hardware?
This is such a big price difference.
BTW, TechTV did a half hour show on Shrek. Quite interesting, and similar to
the article quoted in this thread. They showed some footage of some glitches,
such as when one of the rendering engines produced an all fuzz donkey, and
what would happen when one of the graphic artists would move a character
beyond the last frame... welcome to bizzaro town, hehe. They talked about
having 10 times the detail in antz, how they could produce layers for
skeleton, muscle, skin, and all would move correctly when the character moved.
Something like 15 programmers working on software just for that movie. Of
course, that will be incorporated into the next adventure I'm sure.
I think Blender was a handout from one of these studios wasn't it?
Well enough blithering; it's wooming and booming so it's time to shut down
....
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