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Weta Digital Supercomputer For Hire

Posted by timothy on from the hey-sailor dept.

sushi writes "NZ's Stuff news site is reporting: 'Peter Jackson's special effects shop Weta Digital has teamed ... to establish a world-class supercomputing facility in Wellington which will be rented out to clients worldwide.' Currently comprising 504 IBM blade servers, each of which contains two 2.8 Gigahertz Intel Xeon processors, 6 Gigabytes of memory and 40 Gigabytes of storage, and ranked 80th in the top 500 supercomputers, they are intending to upgrade into the top 10. Also covered at the Australian Financial Review."

14 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. So... by iamdrscience · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are we going to see a "Meet the Feebles part 2" or what?

  2. Awesome by iamdrscience · · Score: 3, Funny

    So now instead of curing diseases, finding large mersenne primes or discovering inteligent life forms we can get hyper realisitc renderings of Gollum's eyelash crust. Spectacular.

    1. Re:Awesome by ColaMan · · Score: 3, Funny

      A good toast :
      "To Pure Mathematics - may it never have any practical use!"

      --

      You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
      There is a lot of hype here.
  3. Re:Dupe? by wrinkledshirt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe Slashdot should rent the machine to keep track of stories with similar content...

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    Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...

  4. my precious..... by Splezunk · · Score: 3, Funny

    my precious.....

  5. Finally! by xsupergr0verx · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thanks to WETA, now I can run Doom 3!

    --

    Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
  6. Imagine by Malfourmed · · Score: 3, Funny

    Imagine Peter Jackson making a cluster of Beowulf movies using those...

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    a world in progress...
  7. Re:This is great by nz_mincemeat · · Score: 3, Funny

    Missle trajectories: supercomputers can help design accurate missle systems, and missle defense systems. See 1 for why this should be restricted.

    Missile trajectories? All you need to calculate that stuff is a Playstation2... Quick! We need to keep these "supercomputers" inside honest nations too ;)

  8. Re:This is great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    If someone paid to rent a supercomputer for a few hours to break your SHA1 SSL keys, you've got bigger problems than just your keys being broken :)

  9. Re:6gig of memory? by zcat_NZ · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yep. Enough for Doom3, or Longhorn. Possibly even enough to run doom3 IN longhorn!!

    --
    455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
  10. Re:Nah... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well it's called 'Brain Dead' down here, so I'd suggest either 'Brain Deader' or 'Dubya'.

  11. Re:King Kong by lewp · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually they've decided not to use any digital effects for King Kong. Peter Jackson will be wearing a gorilla suit.

    Why do you think they're renting out the cluster?

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    Game... blouses.
  12. Re:Once and for all... by I+confirm+I'm+not+a · · Score: 3, Funny

    We will now truly be able to figure out how many New Zealanders it takes to change a light bulb.

    Just one, but he won't change the bulb - he'll fix it using bind-a-twine and 8-guage fencing wire.

    (Disclaimer: exiled Kiwi)

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    This is where the serious fun begins.
  13. Connectivity Question by dosun88888 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do they use Tolkien Ring?

    ~D