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Weta Digital Grows Cluster

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-a-whole-lotta-muscle dept.

Korgan writes "A little over 3 years after their last upgrade, Weta Digital has just added another 250 more blade servers to their render farm to help with the final renderings of King Kong. From the article: "The IBM Xeon blade servers, each with two 3.4 gigahertz processors and 8 gigabytes of memory, are housed at the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre in central Wellington. They have been added to the centre's existing bank of 1144 Intel 2.8GHz processors, boosting its power by 50 per cent to create a supercomputer with the equivalent power of nearly 15,000 PCs. The servers run the Red Hat version of the open-source Linux operating system. The purchase means the centre is back among the 100 largest supercomputing clusters in the world." And all that computing power is still available for hire when Peter Jackson isn't using it."

18 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Clearly... by TooMuchEspressoGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clearly we need a Beowulf cluster to slay this gigantic King Kong cluster!

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    Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
    1. Re:Clearly... by WormholeFiend · · Score: 2, Funny

      Rumor has it that Peter Jackson is already considering a King Kong sequel, involving a MechaKingKong running Linux.

      He wanted to have a MechaGodzilla, but it was running a Sony proprietary OS.

    2. Re:Clearly... by Mercano · · Score: 4, Funny

      What about a MechaMozilla, the open source alternative?

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      #include <signature.h>
  2. Blah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's nothing. The people arrested in the story earlier today had the computing power of 100,000 personal computers. Beat that!

  3. power draw by dreadlocks · · Score: 5, Funny

    that's why the lights dim in Wellington when the cluster is rendering

    1. Re:power draw by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 3, Funny

      You have no idea how hard it is for an Australian to resist making a joke about dim lights in Wellington having nothing to do with the power grid...oh, whoops...

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      Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  4. Re:King Kong? by Capt+James+McCarthy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sad to say that the pr0n industry has ruined this movie title forever.

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    There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
  5. Re:* sigh * by Average_Joe_Sixpack · · Score: 4, Funny

    Things have improved since TRON

    Except Jeff Bridges' acting

  6. Contact? by jridley · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hmm, how to get them on my SETI team....

  7. Re:Obligatory by frank378 · · Score: 2, Funny
    Yes, obligatory.

    In Soviet Russia, cluster grow you.

  8. Extra-Beefy Power Supply perhaps??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Power of 1 PC: 250 Watts
    Power of 15,000 PCs: Enough to power a small town

    Ability to do math in your head: Priceless

    For everything else, there's xcalc.

  9. Re:And to think... by delire · · Score: 5, Funny

    Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith was processed on just a 140-processor Opteron AMD64 farm running Windows 64-bit beta.
    No wonder the film was so bad.
  10. New Zealand targeted by ONU !! by Dam's · · Score: 2, Funny

    In other news, New Zealand is accused by the ONU for not respecting the Kyoto treaty.
    It appears that New Zealand is now the World n1 heat producer, the origin of that heat is currently unknown.

    Well, joke aside, I hope for them than the clim won't break...

  11. Re:Netcraft confirms it by FishandChips · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think it's sheep-power in New Zealand. And hey, after that, Hollywood can reuse them to fleece movie-goers.

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    Las qué passoun
    tournoun pas maï
  12. Sweet! by Black+Francis · · Score: 3, Funny

    The IBM Xeon blade servers, each with two 3.4 gigahertz processors and 8 gigabytes of memory...
    ... now they might even be able to run Vista!

  13. The movie will still be a train wreck by kindbud · · Score: 2, Funny

    I mean, come on. Why King Kong? Was the world really lacking yet another King Kong adaptation? This movie will make Gozilla look like Independence Day.

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    Edith Keeler Must Die
  14. Re:sheer power by Paul+Rose · · Score: 2, Funny

    They could reduce that with a little shear power

    Here all week, don't forget to tip your waitress.

  15. Excellent! by pyro+jackelope · · Score: 2, Funny

    Available for hire eh? Uh yeah...lemme just pull out my checkbook ;-).

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    28:06:42:12 - That is when the world will end...