Pixar picks Intel chips for animation computers
<a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030210/tech_intel_pixar_1.html"; target="_blank">Pixar article at Yahoo News/Reuters</a>
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Pixar Animation Studios Inc. (NasdaqNM
IXR - News), which brought ants to life in the film "A Bug's Life," is switching its animation rendering to computers based on Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - News) microprocessors, the companies said on Monday.
Pixar is replacing an unknown number of Sun Microsystems Inc. (NasdaqNM:SUNW - News) computers with about 120 servers built around Intel Xeon processors, Intel said.
The deal gives Intel, the predominant chipmaker for desktop systems, a push further into the high-end computing space in which multiple servers clustered together provide enough computing power for data-hungry processing used in such industries as financial services and health care.
Pixar's RenderFarm, used to create digital images for each frame of animation in its movies, will use 1,024 Xeon processors inside eight new BladeRack supercomputing clusters from hardware company RackSaver. The systems will run Pixar's own RenderMan software.
The BladeRack systems contain 66 dual-processor servers. Each Xeon processor at 2.8 gigahertz is about five times faster than the older RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing)-based processors from Sun, Intel and Pixar said in a statement.
Sun has new machines that are much faster than the computers Pixar purchased four years ago or so, a Sun representative said.
The Sun official also noted that Pixar is known for using multiple computing platforms and may still be using Sun machines for some rendering. Pixar officials were not available for comment.
Emeryville, California-based Pixar is using the system for the film "The Incredibles," which is scheduled for release next year.
"What they're building is the world's largest super-computing cluster for digital animation," said Deborah Conrad, an Intel vice president of sales and marketing.
With the move, Pixar becomes the seventh major studio in eight months to switch to Intel for animation rendering, which requires heavy data processing. Other studios include Industry, Light & Magic, Sony Pictures (Tokyo:6758.T - News), Walt Disney Co. (NYSE
IS - News), and Dreamworks, according to Santa Clara, California-based Intel.
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Pixar Animation Studios Inc. (NasdaqNM
IXR - News), which brought ants to life in the film "A Bug's Life," is switching its animation rendering to computers based on Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - News) microprocessors, the companies said on Monday.Pixar is replacing an unknown number of Sun Microsystems Inc. (NasdaqNM:SUNW - News) computers with about 120 servers built around Intel Xeon processors, Intel said.
The deal gives Intel, the predominant chipmaker for desktop systems, a push further into the high-end computing space in which multiple servers clustered together provide enough computing power for data-hungry processing used in such industries as financial services and health care.
Pixar's RenderFarm, used to create digital images for each frame of animation in its movies, will use 1,024 Xeon processors inside eight new BladeRack supercomputing clusters from hardware company RackSaver. The systems will run Pixar's own RenderMan software.
The BladeRack systems contain 66 dual-processor servers. Each Xeon processor at 2.8 gigahertz is about five times faster than the older RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing)-based processors from Sun, Intel and Pixar said in a statement.
Sun has new machines that are much faster than the computers Pixar purchased four years ago or so, a Sun representative said.
The Sun official also noted that Pixar is known for using multiple computing platforms and may still be using Sun machines for some rendering. Pixar officials were not available for comment.
Emeryville, California-based Pixar is using the system for the film "The Incredibles," which is scheduled for release next year.
"What they're building is the world's largest super-computing cluster for digital animation," said Deborah Conrad, an Intel vice president of sales and marketing.
With the move, Pixar becomes the seventh major studio in eight months to switch to Intel for animation rendering, which requires heavy data processing. Other studios include Industry, Light & Magic, Sony Pictures (Tokyo:6758.T - News), Walt Disney Co. (NYSE
IS - News), and Dreamworks, according to Santa Clara, California-based Intel.
Comments
[quote] The Pixar deal comes amid a spate of shuttle diplomacy taking place between Intel and Apple Computer. Both Pixar and Apple share the same CEO, Steve Jobs. At Macworld in January, Intel President Paul Otellini sat in the front row for Steve Jobs' keynote as a VIP guest of Apple. Jobs also gave Otellini a tour of the show floor.
Later in January, Jobs delivered the morning keynote address at Intel's annual sales conference in Las Vegas. "Andy (Grove) always tries to bring someone in from the outside," said an Intel representative. "Andy has always thought of Steve as being a quite a creative force in the industry."
The Intel chairman and Apple's CEO are, in fact, old friends. Still, "I'm sure one of the reasons he did it was for the shock value," the representative said.
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