The technical effects studio has switched from using RISC-Unix workstations from SGI to using Intel-based Dell systems running Linux for the bulk of its animation and special effects work, said Cliff Plumer, ILM’s chief technology officer. As part of the conversion, ILM recently deployed 600 Pentium 4 workstations. “The Intel workstations that were deployed were probably 20 percent of the price of SGI workstations we bought a few years ago,” Plumer said. “Performance-wise, they are about three times as fast.” Read the report at News.com.
“Star Wars” Effects Studio Shifts to Intel
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It’s probably the biggest problem with computers… once a commodity platform emerged, everything became bound to it. The price/performance gap between commodity and proprietary hardware is continuing to widen. Every day those who create proprietary platforms are losing ground to the ever growing commodity market. It’s a shame, really… the best technology is inherently doomed to failure
One cannot think “best” technology without factoring in price. Or flexibility. Or speed. Or adapability. Or compatibility.
The “scale” in the economy got there because there was a large demand and more manufacturing, suppliers, shippers, etc had to be created to satisfy the market demand. The general purpose, open architecture PC was adaptable to many market needs and generated vast demand.
The Intel-based PC platform has provided an excellent balance of price, performance, flexibility, adaptability, expandability, and compatiblity for the past 20 years. In recent times, AMD has pushed price/performance even further, having created the Athlon which offers amazing floating point performance for the price.
There is still plenty of space for the proprietary platform. It just has to satisfy a market need that the mainstream platform does not.
With the spectrum of PC solutions, from entry-level Walmart PC’s to powerful Dual Athlon and Dual Xeon workstations, the proprietary platform has to fit outside of this rather wide spectrum in order to have a sustainable market niche.
Clearly, SGI had no compelling value proposition when it came to volume rendering. With the advent of hardware-based rendering on the horizon, there will be less and less of a value proposition even for the giant SGI machines.
This is all a byproduct of Moore’s Law. $/MIP will tend towards zero over time. If your company’s processor offerings are not matching Moore’s Law, you are behind the curve and your company will struggle to stay alive.
#m
The technical merits of Linux are always played down as if it were adopted child in the OS family. Why must Linux always be a “commodity” to people who are still using AMIGA’s for god sakes! Linux is a great platform and I want to have some reasonable explainations as to why you people think it isn’t. Hell what should have they used on these intel machines? Windows XP? Heck I don’t even think windows 2000 would be appropriate.
Bascule and Michael are talking about commodity hardware, not software. The Intel/AMD hardware is commodity hardware compared to the offerings of Sun, HP, SGI etc.
Linux isn’t commodity software yet, Windows is.
The article is abuot replacing expensive hardware with cheap hardware. The fact that they run Linux instead of Windows/AmigaOS/BSD isn’t very important. The big saving is on the hardware.
And I don’t think there is any reason to take offense at anything that could be construed as criticism of Linux. Linux isn’t perfect (far from it) so much of the criticism is valid (just like a lot of criticism is total bollocks).
“Linux is a great platform and I want to have some reasonable explainations as to why you people think it isn’t.”
My mother
Linux is incredibly effective from a price/performance perspective.
What I see from the ILM announcement is that they went with Dell for their workstations, probably because they need a Tier 1 vendor. Also because Intel chipsets and processors are rock solid reliable.
ILM did go with AMD Athlon for their 1000 CPU render farm, likely because of Athlon’s excellent FP performance.
Alas, AMD Athlon does not have a Tier 1 vendor for their dual Athlon solutions. That would certainly help AMD sales and margins.
#m
>My mother
And what has this got to do with CGI at ILM (or even the enterprise or server market)? Does she work at ILM perhaps?
Linux is offering companies the opportunity to get (at a great cost) an OS that can handle the jobs they have to do – the proof is in the existence of films like Shrek or the recent Star Wars film. Please do NOT let this descend into the usual “Linux for desktop suxxxx”, or “Xfree86 suxxxx” – this has been thrashed to death here already. This article is about commercial applications in the entertainment industry.
The SGI boxes ran IRIX, do you expect them to switch to Windows? Linux is one of the x86 *NIX alternatives.
If Linux is good enough for ILM, can CG be the Linux workstation killer app?
Say Linux had two main focuses for workstation computing:
1) Linux is the premier software development platform.
2) Linux is the best CG platform, for both content creation and content rendering.
Seems like these two bases would provide a very strong platform for tremendous innovation on the Linux platform.
#m
It’s probably the biggest problem with computers… once a commodity platform emerged, everything became bound to it. The price/performance gap between commodity and proprietary hardware is continuing to widen. Every day those who create proprietary platforms are losing ground to the ever growing commodity market. It’s a shame, really… the best technology is inherently doomed to failure
Not really, it’s just that it can’t be only incrementaly better technology, it has to offer a significantly better value proposition to encourage a switch. No doubt, SGI machines are better technololgy than a generic Intel box, but are they enough better to justify paying 4 times as much? Not anymore. A generic x86 box may not be as good, but it’s good enough.
One of the interesting things about this story is that the blurb really hits you and you think, “Whoa, what’s going on here?”. If you read the story, you begin to understand more and then, when you break it down like Michael did, it all makes perfect sense. But many people will only see the blurb at News.com. *Linux* is the word that really jumps out at you. So, even in that sense, it’s a nice little booster shot for Linux.
ILM is one account I’m SURE Steve Jobs wanted. Guys like this are all Apple’s been targeting lately. “Macs in the making of Star Wars” is a big feature in the new MacAddict. ILM is *SO* much more able to put pressure on Apple to release G5 processors than us. Apple’s stupid, they’ve been getting slack and lazy knowing they have a “captive audience” of zealots and die-hard mac fans – hopefully this wakes up Jobs and forces him to realize that for actual production work, being slow is a great competitive disadvantage. Using an Apple puts a company at a disadvantage until they get UP TO BASE INDUSTRY STANDARD SPEEDS! Faster processor, faster bus speed, faster memory, faster video cards, faster hard drives, faster OS. Did I miss anything?
And I’ve seen people talking about Genentech’s Blast being used on PPC and using it as an example of a company choosing Macs because they’re faster. Actually, the head of Genentech (the guy who was on the PowerBook G4 infomercial) is on Apple’s Board of Directors. He’s a pro-Apple zealot, just like us. So his choice was probably biased.
Sure, this is the way to go for Linux. Maybe SGI can jump in if they hurry up, but this market is about to be taken by Linux (in conjunction with IRIX, MacOS and Windows – none of the studios is focused 100% on a single operating system).
But a tractor app for Linux as a software for the private user? Not at all. If the use of a certain system in professional environments had an impact on the home user market, we’d all be using IRIX right now to play Quake.
>And what has this got to do with CGI at ILM (or even the >enterprise or server market)? Does she work at ILM perhaps?
FFS – read what is being written!!!
I was replying to THIS stament – not the article!!:
“Linux is a great platform and I want to have some reasonable explainations as to why you people think it isn’t”
really… the best technology is inherently doomed to failure
If you have a technology that takes twice to produce and doesn’t compete in performance with comodity architecture(s)or doesn’t justify the final price than it’s not the best technology unless it scales acording to the mentioned Moore’s. The article says “Performance-wise, they are about three times as fast.”
The problem here is that I tink that proprietary vendors do a big speculation on pricing, or they did because now they have to face a hard reality, this being comodity arch can be almost up to equal the proprietary performance, and the scalability has been lost on proprietary arch and I can’t imagine where they will find a market niche in 2 years from now (excluding main frames ? even in this niche Intel is trying to break through, OK maybe 3 years ?), the same on Mac PowerPC G*, it can’t scale anymore.
Linux is one of the x86 *NIX alternatives.
And FreeBSD. I don’t know why they choose Linux instead since BSD is better for networked tasks, they must have a (technical) reason to choose Linux, maybe it’s because there is Software already well ported like Maya for Linux reducing efforts and time. SGI does sell a Linux distro.
The fact that they run Linux instead of Windows/AmigaOS/BSD isn’t very important. The big saving is on the hardware.
It’s important. Paying 600 Microsoft licenses isn’t rational when you can install/download a Linux OS that will have a better networking stack and more net tools to deploy and cluster software for 600 machines than Microsoft’s Avanced Server OS. Linux has a future in this enterprise level of “users”.
Pentium 4 512K L2 on 0.13 micron (heat when those poor 600 cpu will work @ 100% for hours on ILM farm room) seems to be a good cpu (maybe they will put 1MB L2 soon
and should be reliable with DELL on the process.
I saw a paper on tom’s hardware about SiS new chipset with DDR400, serial ATA and AGP8 for P4, the future is bright for PC arch. What’s DELL chipset of choice (Intel?)?
I wonder what this means for the longer term implications. If it becomes established in the field of CGI, won’t it be difficult for anything else to challenge?
The price alone makes things difficult for commercial companies who will have to offer an awful lot to compete. As I understand, ILM does a lot of in-house programming anyway and probably doesn’t need much tech support. The software they have written makes is less attractive to switch to another platform.
Perhaps another “niche” market for the penguin?
This is very simerlar news to what happened with P.J.(& co)’s WetaFX Digital (is Lucas playing catch-up?
). They decided to go with 2 way xeons for their new render farm running linux because a local (New Zealand) supplier could put them in a 1u rack.
So I don’t think the tier 1 oem has much to do with it. Though they did use IBM for their workstations.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=technology&th…
As for this being the killer app for linux, I don’t really think so. There are relitivly few large render farms, and they only reason they are using linux I would imagine is because it is relitivly stable and free. When all your doing is number crunching, the OS doesn’t really matter too much. However it does add a little more credability atleast.
“It’s important. Paying 600 Microsoft licenses isn’t rational when you can install/download a Linux OS that will have a better networking stack”
Better networking stack? Did you read the article? These are WORKSTATIONS, not a rendering farm. Anyway, Windows2000/XP use FreeBSD’s TCP/IP stack which makes it pretty damn good, and better than Linux’s stack in some areas.
“and more net tools to deploy and cluster software for 600 machines than Microsoft’s Avanced Server OS. Linux has a future in this enterprise level of “users””
Deploying Windows is just as easy as Linux. As far as clustering goes, they won’t be using it because, again, these are going to be workstations.
“I saw a paper on tom’s hardware about SiS new chipset with DDR400, serial ATA and AGP8 for P4, the future is bright for PC arch. What’s DELL chipset of choice (Intel?)?”
You obviously aren’t too experienced in Pentium 4 chipsets because no professional is going to use a SiS chipset when you can get an Intel chipset which is more mature and is faster.
Well my mother uses SQL Server so maybe that’s why she doesn’t use linux… She used to use VMS until the entire organization decided to “standardize” on Microsoft. It sure wasn’t fun when the worm of the day hits!
I remember some time ago reading that Titanic’s CGI was generated on Red Hat workstations. The FX company could modify the OS code to optimize for their needs. The beauty of Linux (and the BSDs) is that is open source. I think that is why ILM is going with Linux, and not Windows XP. ILM can do whatever they want to the code, whenever they want to, and don’t have to rely on anyone to do it for them. Granted, they could do the same with any BSD, but Linux was their choice. Perhaps there are technological reasons for it, perhaps not.
LINUX is a great platform– much faster than Windows and more stable. But switching to Dells is a major step down. They would have done best speed/reliability wise by moving to OS X/PowerPC. But maybe they read those bogus benchmarkers that that windows stooge compiled for adobe premiere….
I only trust numbers from people I trust. You have to look for hidden agendas.
I doubt ILM would have made the switch without looking at a price/performance ratio, Tom. Sounds like you only believe numbers from people that agree with your philosophy – benchmarks can “prove” points-of-view whichever way anyone wants. Most everyone has an agenda, whether they’ll admit it or not.
Again, it’s seriously doubtful ILM didn’t do their homework here.
I think Tom Barta being sacastic here. Unless he misunderstood how to read benchmark result.
Could be. I’m kinda slow at times…
It’s funny. The advocates of Linux want it to be ubiquitous, and they laugh at Windows for things like the “worm of the day.”
But if Linux were as popular and widely used as Windows, it would be the target of the worm of the day. Anyone writing a worm wants to get the most bang for his buck, and by targeting the most widely used platform, he will get this. The more widely used Linux becomes, the more attractive it will be as a target for the worm of the day.
Of course, it may be more difficult to target Linux in this regard, but some of that may be due to the fact that people go out of their way to find vulnerabilities in Windows, and since few crackers target Linux, not many people are out there looking for vulnerabilities.
(In the interests of full disclosure, I’m a fan of both Linux and Windows, like different things about each, and use them for different purposes.)
My primary computer at home is a flat-panel iMac with a 700MHz G4 running OS X. I love everything about this beautiful, elegant machine except its speed. I want Apple to survive, and the only way this is going to happen is to switch to x86. Continuing to deal with Slowtorola, or flirting with IBM, will lead to a decaying Apple. Whatever its technical deficiencies compared to PowerPC, x86 is the only viable alternative. I think Intel is probably out of the question for Apple, and why bother anyway? Apple and AMD need to have a chat.
Windows2000/XP use FreeBSD’s TCP/IP stack which makes it pretty damn good, and better than Linux’s stack in some areas.
This is what I said, that’s I didn’t undersatnd why they choose Linux instaed of BSD.
As far as clustering goes, they won’t be using it because, again, these are going to be workstations.
I didn’t fully read the article and not with great atention and I made a confusion with the Pentium4 and Athlon (x86 for render-farm)+CompaqAlpha (for server cluster); so, do you want to kill me because of it ?
About the SiS new chipset, I don’t know why a professional wouldn’t use it; I’m not a professional like you but I would use the best and more reliable and sometimes the best chipset is not Intel’s and Intel even try to prevent it by not licensing better chipsets like it happens with the VIA P4, as for fasteness Intel chipsets are always slower than Taiwanese competition.
This is the second time you come with big criticism on something I said, I feel like I’m answering to a ? mark because you post anonymously, next time just ignore my ignorance, and if you are a professional use italics to quote me next time, it takes the same time and effort and improves readability.
Apple and AMD need to have a chat.
They do, but if Apple moves to x86 they might loose their pedigree.
My mother
It seems some people in here are little to caught up with there mothers and computers. So what if your mother can’t use Linux, my mom can hardly use Windows, and now that I’ve moved out I’m her tech support line. I don’t see why people are shooting down Linux because their family can’t use it, when regular people everyday have problems with Windows!
This argument is not valid, yes Linux is not a complete desktop OS, but Windows isn’t perfect either.
I agree that Linux isn’t a good desktop OS but… for what is needed for this job it will be just fine. Moving from IRIX to Linux is an easier transition than from IRIX to Windows for then. ILM HAS *NIX experience so that isn’t an issue for them. They picked the best OS for THEIR job. Not every problem will have the same solution.
Not a good desktop OS for the average consumer, I should say. For experienced users its not a problem.
You guys flame a lot in here and I don’t want to get into war today. 🙂 LOL
Switched all their desktops for the animation department to Linux, WHY? The reason is for one that no one is talking about, CUSTIMIZATION (I think I spelled that wrong).
If the team feels that something in the software (be it the OS or the rendering software) needs to be fixed, they can rewrite a chunk of code and have it ready in a few hours. There is no way that they could do that with Windows or Mac OS X, you would have to wait for either the service pack or the next release of the OS.
More and more of Hollywood is going this route. Many of their 3D programs are now being written in house.
Err, they switched from Sgi workstations. This means they switched from a unix os to another unix os. Sure, making changes in Irix (os on sgi machines) is more expensive, but they already had all inhouse tools. They could customize that all they wanted.
The reason they’re switching to PC’s running Linux and not to MacOS or Windows or whatever is that the PC hardware is cheap and fast and that they don’t have to do much development on Linux themselves, because world + dog is doing it for them. Also, porting from Irix to Linux isn’t that difficult.
They may well have picked Linux for XFS for all we know. Especially when dealing with large graphics files, XFS seems to be the best. (lets see if I can start a filesystem war…
)
Of course I’m an IRIX admin, so take that with a grain of salt. We did this where I worked: we had a system with multiple SGIs to process stuff, and they ported the code to Linux and dual-700 P3s (this was a year or two ago). IRIX -> Linux is really quite easy once you get past the wierd Linux bugs.
Oh, and Dell’s suck. I’ve never seen so many components go bad before this job. (well, that’s not true, but the other job was with Dell’s too)
” … on “Rendezvous with Rama,” a thriller coming out next year in which a group of humans seek revenge on aliens that blow up Italy. ”
Rendezvous with Rama a thriller? Eh? Rendezvous with Rama comming to theatres? Woo hoo!
I certainly don’t remember aliens blowing up Italy in Rendevous with Rama. In fact part of the whole point of the book is that the aliens don’t actually do very much.
Digital Revelations is largely relying on Intel-based computers for the effects on “Rendezvous with Rama,” a thriller coming out next year in which a group of humans seek revenge on aliens that blow up Italy.
<p>
What? I just read Rendezvous with Rama yesterday, and in the book, an asteroid blows up some cities in Italy, which causes Earth to build a network of asteroid-detection satellites, and a hundred or so years later, one of them detects an unmanned alien spaceship, which they proceed to (peacefully) explore. I hope the above quote is wrong; otherwise it sounds like they are going to completely misrepresent the story and turn it into “Independence Day 2”. :^(
Well after playing around with a hp laptop this weekend running a new AMD. This time around Apple isn’t going to get my purchase. OS X is still my favorite OS. But linux is calling me, and myself being a fellow fin..I think it will be a good machine for me to wait out till Apple starts using Intel. Cheers…..to linux
“I think Tom Barta being sacastic here. Unless he misunderstood how to read benchmark result.”
No, I’m serious. Every RELIABLE benchmark I’ve seen shows that a 1 gig G4 is about the same as a 1.6 gig Athlon or a 2 gig P4. This does NOT excuse MOT for not being at 2 gig by now, though…..
I’m surprised Dell even allows them to use Linux. Dell forces Windows XP on all their home users. Not only that, but home users are also require to BUY either M$ Office or Works. You can’t just say, “No Thanks, I’ll use OpenOffice.”
Also, it used to be that if you opened a computer, it would void your warranty. With the easy upgradability of computers these days, this has changed. Today the only thing that voids a Dell Warranty is “installing another operating system”. This is due to the OEM license agreement that Dell has for Windows XP.
I guess if you’re a big corporate client like Lucas, Dell bends their policies a little bit. I currently have a new Dell, whose warranty I voided the first day I got it….triple boot running: Windows XP, Linux Mandrake, and my personal fave BeOS.
Perhaps working with corporate entities like Lucas, that use Linux workstations, will make Dell more OS friendly. Perhaps if users were pissed enough about Dell OS policy, they might change these policies.
>>ILM is one account I’m SURE Steve Jobs wanted. Guys like this are all Apple’s been targeting lately. “Macs in the making of Star Wars” is a big feature in the new MacAddict. ILM is *SO* much more able to put pressure on Apple to release G5 processors than us. Apple’s stupid, they’ve been getting slack and lazy knowing they have a “captive audience” of zealots and die-hard mac fans – hopefully this wakes up Jobs and forces him to realize that for actual production work, being slow is a great competitive disadvantage. Using an Apple puts a company at a disadvantage until they get UP TO BASE INDUSTRY STANDARD SPEEDS! Faster processor, faster bus speed, faster memory, faster video cards, faster hard drives, faster OS. Did I miss anything?<<
Well Steve Jobs actually did get an account from Lucas Films already since their sound studio is entirely all Mac. All sounds effects and so forth are done on the Macintosh!
As for George Lucas himself… he is a Mac freak as claimed and I wouldn’t put it passed him to adopt Macs in other areas in the future!
Just got back from Eastern Europe and it was awesome… I visited one of the most beautiful cities in all of Europe. See which one you think it is;
A) Budapest
B) Vienna
C) Prague
D) All the Above
E) None of the Above
Good luck 🙂