Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

From
http://www.macrumors.com/
A number of independent reports have indicated the same thing... that
Pixar is moving to Mac OS X...

Readers may remember a report in February in which CNet reported that
Pixar was moving from Sun servers to Intel based servers for their
render farms. At present, this will remain unchanged. However, new
reports (and one user Siggraph post ) indicate that Pixar's internal
applications and pre-visualiation software is moving to Mac OS X, and
(presumably) to PowerMac G5's.

Pixar demonstrated Renderman OS X at Siggraph this year (with benchmarks
between Xeon and G5 machines), and Architosh reports that RenderMan for
OS X beta will be available in September, with the final version
shipping later this year.

Meanwhile, Pixar's website reveals they are currently hiring a Mac OS X
Migration Contractor at this time.

P

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

In article <who-70D01A.13284302082003@news.xtra.co.nz>,
Who is this <who@is.this> wrote:

> From
> http://www.macrumors.com/
> A number of independent reports have indicated the same thing... that
> Pixar is moving to Mac OS X...

That'll be quite a coup for Apple.

How did they convince the CEO?

-- Bruce

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

"Bruce Hoult" <bruce@hoult.org> wrote in message
news:bruce-5333E1.15194002082003@copper.ipg.tsnz.net...
> In article <who-70D01A.13284302082003@news.xtra.co.nz>,
> Who is this <who@is.this> wrote:
>
> > From
> > http://www.macrumors.com/
> > A number of independent reports have indicated the same thing... that
> > Pixar is moving to Mac OS X...
>
> That'll be quite a coup for Apple.
>
> How did they convince the CEO?
>
> -- Bruce

Heh
Its pretty typical of Mac advocates to only quote half the story.
It says that their renderfarm of 1024 Intel processors running Linux will
remain.

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

In article <9XJWa.8782$9f7.1032180@news02.tsnz.net>, "lily" <xx@xx.xx>
wrote:

> "Bruce Hoult" <bruce@hoult.org> wrote in message
> news:bruce-5333E1.15194002082003@copper.ipg.tsnz.net...
> > In article <who-70D01A.13284302082003@news.xtra.co.nz>,
> > Who is this <who@is.this> wrote:
> >
> > > From
> > > http://www.macrumors.com/
> > > A number of independent reports have indicated the same thing... that
> > > Pixar is moving to Mac OS X...
> >
> > That'll be quite a coup for Apple.
> >
> > How did they convince the CEO?
> >
> > -- Bruce
>
> Heh
> Its pretty typical of Mac advocates to only quote half the story.
> It says that their renderfarm of 1024 Intel processors running Linux will
> remain.

Actually I quoted the whole article, and the intimation was "for now"

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

lily <xx@xx.xx> wrote in message
news:9XJWa.8782$9f7.1032180@news02.tsnz.net...
> Heh
> Its pretty typical of Mac advocates to only quote half the story.
> It says that their renderfarm of 1024 Intel processors running Linux will
> remain.

I think replacing the artists workstations is a much bigger coup than
replacing the renderfarm.

Render farms have bugger all requirements apart from being cheap. The guts
of the rendering code has next to no platform specific features. The
necessary hardware is basically just a cpu or two, some ram, and a network
interface - no support for high end video hardware etc needed.

In saying that, Linux is starting to make an impact on workstations in the
movie industry too.

Cheers
Anton

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

"Who is this" <who@is.this> wrote in message
news:who-1B24C0.00271603082003@news.xtra.co.nz...
> In article <9XJWa.8782$9f7.1032180@news02.tsnz.net>, "lily" <xx@xx.xx>
> wrote:
>
> > "Bruce Hoult" <bruce@hoult.org> wrote in message
> > news:bruce-5333E1.15194002082003@copper.ipg.tsnz.net...
> > > In article <who-70D01A.13284302082003@news.xtra.co.nz>,
> > > Who is this <who@is.this> wrote:
> > >
> > > > From
> > > > http://www.macrumors.com/
> > > > A number of independent reports have indicated the same thing...
that
> > > > Pixar is moving to Mac OS X...
> > >
> > > That'll be quite a coup for Apple.
> > >
> > > How did they convince the CEO?
> > >
> > > -- Bruce
> >
> > Heh
> > Its pretty typical of Mac advocates to only quote half the story.
> > It says that their renderfarm of 1024 Intel processors running Linux
will
> > remain.
>
> Actually I quoted the whole article, and the intimation was "for now"

What advantage do you think there would be running Renderman on a PPC in
*nix compared to running Renderman on a x86 in *nix.
Enough to discard a 1024 processor renderwall that you bought in February ?
The bean counters would go ballistic !

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

"lily" wrote
| Enough to discard a 1024 processor renderwall that you bought in February
?
| The bean counters would go ballistic !
|


Unless it made it fast enough to make the investment worth while, but it
would have to be incredibly quick to do that.

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

lily wrote:

> Enough to discard a 1024 processor renderwall that you bought in February
> ? The bean counters would go ballistic !

Well you wouldn't have to rip and replace. Assuming thats what your CEO is
demanding and that Renderman (or whatever) runs on both platforms, you
could just add the new machines in to the existing farm. The beauty of
render farms is that the machines are all independent of each other -
unlike some other computation clusters.

Of course, I doubt the economics would be worth it. A rack of dual Athlon or
Xeon machines would give a lot more bang for buck than a rack of Apple
XServes.

Although I would like to try out an XServe for use in a small LAN.

Cheers
Anton

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

In article <bgk05o$pnmkg$1@ID-184423.news.uni-berlin.de>,
"AD." <me@privacy.net> wrote:

> lily wrote:
>
> > Enough to discard a 1024 processor renderwall that you bought in February
> > ? The bean counters would go ballistic !
>
> Well you wouldn't have to rip and replace. Assuming thats what your CEO is
> demanding and that Renderman (or whatever) runs on both platforms, you
> could just add the new machines in to the existing farm. The beauty of
> render farms is that the machines are all independent of each other -
> unlike some other computation clusters.
>
> Of course, I doubt the economics would be worth it. A rack of dual Athlon or
> Xeon machines would give a lot more bang for buck than a rack of Apple
> XServes.

Actually the benchmarks showed that bang for buck the dual processor G5
out performed the dual Xenon

Re: Pixar to move to the G5 and OSX ?
 

"Who is this" <who@is.this> wrote in message
news:who-210E31.17265904082003@news.xtra.co.nz...
> In article <bgk05o$pnmkg$1@ID-184423.news.uni-berlin.de>,
> "AD." <me@privacy.net> wrote:
>
> > lily wrote:
> >
> > > Enough to discard a 1024 processor renderwall that you bought in
February
> > > ? The bean counters would go ballistic !
> >
> > Well you wouldn't have to rip and replace. Assuming thats what your CEO
is
> > demanding and that Renderman (or whatever) runs on both platforms, you
> > could just add the new machines in to the existing farm. The beauty of
> > render farms is that the machines are all independent of each other -
> > unlike some other computation clusters.
> >
> > Of course, I doubt the economics would be worth it. A rack of dual
Athlon or
> > Xeon machines would give a lot more bang for buck than a rack of Apple
> > XServes.
>
> Actually the benchmarks showed that bang for buck the dual processor G5
> out performed the dual Xenon

Benchmarketing is always total *******s, and these tests have been proved to
be shallow scams (most recently concerning Apple IIRC)

I can see a case for macintoshes as workstations in a animation factory, but
not as a renderfarm blade