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"Antique" Computers Resurrected As Rendering Farm?

Posted by Cliff on from the it's-alive!-it's-alive! dept.

Dynedain asks: "Let's suppose that an architecture fraternity suddenly has the opportunity of obtaining a handful or two of old SGI Indigos for little or no cost. What do they do with them? Obvious answer: set up a render farm for their digital projects. Now the question is HOW? We have the ability to network these machines (via TCP/IP on a 10bT network) and a few of us have experience w/ UNIX flavors. We've even been playing with Blender, but it seems to lack network rendering support. Considering we are relative newbies, the limitations of the Indigo (1Gb HD, 96 MB RAM, IRIX 5.3), and the fact that we have no money to spend on licensing, what solutions are available for implementing a 3D render farm with DXF support? Do we cluster? Or do we run network scripts?"

5 of 17 comments (clear)

  1. Do it for the sheer fun, not the performance by shrike · · Score: 5

    Hi

    Those Indigos, while nice, aren't exactly real performers anymore (especially if they've still got R3000 CPUs). A modern day CPU, such as an AMD Athlon, will run circles around a bunch of those SGI boxes. If you want performance, buy an AMD Duron or even a Thunderbird. A Pentium III would do nicely too.

    However, if you're into this kind of stuff (clusters, etc), this is going to be a lot of fun!

    You could use a free raytracer, such as POVray or BMRT, which should give you excellent quality output. You should still be able to find IRIX 5.3 binaries of both programs.
    You'll need to use some other program to convert your CAD files to one of the formats supported by these raytraces. There are several programs that can do this.

  2. Re:Well... by 11223 · · Score: 2
    User interface speed has nothing to do with clock speed. My Pilot is zippier than my main computer, but that's because my computer has abstraction layer on top of layer on top of... you get the picture.

    Usability is possible on outdated hardware, except where computational neccesity overrides.

  3. Re:OT: Old 486's by biftek · · Score: 2
    Check out mosix.org, they've got some (free, GPL iirc) software which splits the CPU load amongst a network of machines. You don't have to recompile your software you're running, any software which supports multiprocessor (ie threads i think) will work. Could be a nice addition of a bit of speed for CPU intensive tasks.

    Of course the power bills might be a bit high.....

  4. Blender has network support! (soon) by paRcat · · Score: 2

    We've even been playing with Blender, but it seems to lack network rendering support

    Go to the Anim menu, look for a button that says Render Daemon. There's your network support. It's even going to be open source when released. If you can hold out for that, you should. Blender is one of the best ways to go, IMHO.


    _______________
    you may quote me

  5. Power use by bluGill · · Score: 2

    Back when distirbtued.net first started (rc5-56, and a ppro-200 was a mean machine) I calculated that enough 386s to equal one ppro-200 would use enough more electrisity that in a year you would have been better off buying the ppro.

    Of course if you want the geek factor, or don't pay utilities, then enjoy. Otherwise think twice about a ne machine.