Weta Digital's Render Farm Upgrade

Headspace2 writes "Weta Digital (The graphics company behing LOtR computer effects) has just purchased 220 2.2GHz dual Xenon machines, each with 4GB of ram, to add to their current render wall of 350 1 Ghz P3 systems. They have also placed an order for another 256 Xenon servers. And it's all running Linux. My favorite quote is 'it is thought the server farm will be the most powerful processing site in the Southern Hemisphere'. They should use that in the FotR ad campaign... 'Rendered using the most powerful processing site in the southern hemisphere' Congrats the guys that get to play with all those clock cycles. Make more movies.

Comments

Does anyone know how to compare these?

[NeMon'ess]

Since there are all kinds of benchmarks, which would be most appropriate here? I'm thinking heavy fpu performance. Most gaming sites only compare single processor performance. Can anyone dig up a benchmark of a dual P4 of 2.2GHz or thereabouts? Then compare to the P3s. I'm guessing this more than doubled their capacity.

has it occured to you

[briancnorton]

Has it occured to you that the southern hemisphere consists almost entirely of southern africa, south america, australia, indonesia and a couple islands? It's not saying all that much to have the fastest computer, Were probabally talking about a population half that of the USA, and most of it is the "developing world."