512 Processor Compaq Alpha System in Film IndustryNew York 13 August 2000 Blue Sky Studios, founded in 1987, is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment and won the Academy Ocar Award with its short film "Bunny". For their computer-animation in films they install a 512 processor Compaq Alpha system in White Plains, NY. The computer is based on AlphaServer DS10L, low profile. Forty of them can be put in a rack. If they are equipped with the 466 MHz Alpha, they deliver a peak performance of nearly 480 GFlop/s peak performance. The expected Linpack performance of about 340 GFlop/s would rank the machine in the top 50 of the Top500 list.
After Compaq's announcements of selling big machies to NSF and the French Atomic Commission as well as in the bioinformatics field, now a new customer was found. In the decision to acquire 512 new AlphaServer DS10L systems, cost was a major factor, as Blue Sky is in business and has to earn money. They found that Compaq provided a very good, cost-effective solution with good floating point performance and reliability for their needs. An other issue was saving floor space, as this was critical because of the high cost of computer room square footage located only 30 miles from New York City.
The AlphaServer DS10L - L means low profile - system's attractive price/performance ratio is reinforced by its small footprint. Up to 40 of these ultra-thin 1U rackmount systems fit into an industry standard rack. Compared to its AlphaServer DS10 couterparts they are only one-third in size. The 512 processors actually deliver with the 466 MHz Alpha about 480 GFlop/s peak. It can be expected that Compaq soon will deliver a 600+ MHz version. In this case the peak performance will increase to 614+ GFlop/s. Then the Linpack performance will grow to about 440 GFlop/s. This would result in rank 35 in the June 2000 Top500 list. Additionaly Blue Sky bought 3.5 terabytes of disk storage. The company has already received several of the machines, and will take delivery on the remainder in late July when the studio moves to its new, larger facility in White Plains, NY.
An other aspect was the clustering capabilities with the single-image management which is built into Compaq Tru64 Unix and Compaq OpenVMS operating systems.
Blus Sky Studios was a pioneer in creatively producing superior photo-realistic, high-resolution, computer-generated character animation for commercials, feature films, and the entertainment industry. It creates high quality computer-generated imagery and character animation while maintaining the highest production standards in the feature film and commercial production business. In 1998 Blue Sky won the Oscar Award with the short film Bunny. It was the first film to use an advanced ambient lighting technology known as radiosity and set new standards in cinematic storytelling for the computer-animation industry.
It uses its proprietary software, CGI Studio, which is considered the best renderer in the business. CGI Studio is based on the concept of raytracing and simulates the way light behaves on real objects and surfaces in a natural environment and incorporates an object-oriented graphics programming language. The software is compute-intensive, and while the R&D department is constantly optimizing the code for speed, the new equipment will cut to a fraction wait times for finished frames of animation. The machines enable the scientists and artists to realize the company's primary goal: the production of raytraced, fully-animated CGI features, efficiently, economically and reliably.
Blue Sky Studios purchased the new computer equipment in anticipation of "Ice Age," its first computer-animated feature film with parent company 20th Century Fox Animation. It will now have more than 50 times its previous computing power, and double the power of any industry competitor to date. The agreement with Compaq underpinns 20th Century Fox's commitment to make Blue Sky a world class animation studio.
Uwe Harms |
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