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HP & Commodity Computing

Posted by Hemos on from the the-grid-network-cometh dept.

Handpaper writes "The BBC has a story about HPs SE3D lab's pilot scheme to provide raw rendering power for smaller studios and amateurs. A sample movie is available.. " Yes, the long fabled "grid computing" may arrive soon on a massive scale.

6 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Wonder what they do with their "idle" CPU cycles by xmas2003 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since they have the hardware in place, I wonder what they do when they don't have films to make and/or work - i.e. would they consider contributing those idle CPU times to something like the Folding@HOME project ... the powder2glass team would love the work units! ;-)

    --
    Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
  2. We keep it busy by steve_l · · Score: 5, Informative

    We have things to do to keep the facility busy; its a flexible fabric and it can do interesting stuff. To be honest, pure CPU cycles is not its strength -many home computers can deliver more mips.

    What the farm(s) have is large amounts of storage near those mips, which is what you need for data-intensive computation. Large animation models is one use. data processing from things like the Large Hadron Collider another, though we wont have real data from the LHC yet.

    Now, if you have projects to run on such a fabric come talk your nearest HP sales rep.

    The stuff we do in HPLabs is focused on 'research on how to use these systems'; things like resource allocation, load balancing for thermal management, etc, etc. I'm working on distributed deployment and testing, using the datacentres and perhaps soon the PlanetLab facility, which has more distribution for interesting problems.

    If you want to play with the deployment tools, to http://smartfrog.org/ and download it. The technology is designed to make it possible to install and configure complex systems over a utility computing infrastructure.

  3. Re:OSS? by Doesn't_Comment_Code · · Score: 2, Informative

    Of course, security would be another issue. There would need to be some way to encrypt data, even when being processed on a machine.

    Renderman uses the concept of "buckets" to limit memory usage. It essentially renders on small part of the screen at a time. If you split the scene into many buckets (already done for you) and send each bucket to a different computer (like many renderfarms already do) you would minimize the security issue. You could "view" the image you rendered by hacking the software - but even then you'd only have a small fraction of the image.

    But before we even start talking about all this, we'd need to know HOW the software was going to communicate. Is it just sending raw scene information to be processed? Or is it sending computations to be processed at an abstract level like grid computing is supposed to? If you really are doing grid computing, your render nodes shouldn't even know they are rendering a picture, or be able to assemble their computations into a picture.

    Your biggest concern would be making the rendering software grid compliant in an efficient manner. It's all downhill from there.

    --

    Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
  4. Re:Alternatives?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Here's one: http://www.respower.com.

    Though they run a traditional render farm rather than a grid, they've beaten HP to the punch by several years.

    The advantage to NOT being on a grid is that they can run render nodes for software people use NOW, instead of what they'll be using years from now. Lightwave, Maya and 3DMax are all supported. You pay by the gigahertz/hour.

    I used them on my last job, and they definately delivered on the promise of speed and support.

  5. Utility, not Grid by steve_l · · Score: 2, Informative

    'grid' computing is such a vague term. The fabric here can be reconfigured to boot different virtual disks, with different stuff running on it. It's not scavenging spare CPU or anything fancy.

    But it could host Globus2.4, even Condor. Or a very large three tier Apache 2.0 HTTPD cluster. If you have the money, you get to choose.

  6. Xgrid for UNIX by not_hylas(+) · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Could someone not write something like this but open source and distributed."

    Darwin:

    http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/ind ex .html

    Xgrid for UNIX:
    This article introduces the first working Xgrid agent for Linux and other Unix systems that can be integrated in any XGrid cluster (managed by OS X).

    http://unu.novajo.ca/simple/archives/000026.html

    http://developer.apple.com/hardware/hpc/xgrid_in tr o.html

    --
    ~hylas