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Slimming Down a Supercomputer

Posted by timothy on from the render-farm-porn dept.

1sockchuck writes "Happy Feet animator Dr. D Studios has packed a large amount of supercomputing power into a smaller package in its new render farm in Sydney, Australia. The digital production shop has consolidated the 150 blade chassis used in the 2007 dancing penguin feature into just 24 chassis, entirely housed in a hot-aisle containment pod. The Dr. D render farm has moved from its previous home at Equinix to the E3 Pegasus data center in Sydney. ITNews has a video and photos of the E3 facility."

3 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. What about the rest of it ? by slincolne · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Physical space is the least interesting point of this article. Other things would be:

    What racks are they using (at least 42RU in height) ?

    How do they get power into these (4 chassis, each with 6 x 15A power inlets) ?

    Are they using rack top switches, or is there more equipment?

    Are they using liquid cooled doors - if so whose ?

    I once tried to get answers from HP on how to power their equipment at this density - they diddn't have a clue. It's worth remembering that each of these chassis has six power supplies, each rated at up to 2.2KW. Even allowing for a 2N configuration, that's a massive amount of power, and a lot of cables.

    1. Re:What about the rest of it ? by dbIII · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Dell servers? Australia is the land Dell forgot so that's the last thing you want. From Australia you end up talking to Dell people from three different continents to get even the smallest problem solved, and the timezone difference as a barrier to communication spins things out to weeks that should be solved in a couple of days. Plus there is far better gear from whitebox suppliers using SuperMicro boards so why use Dell in the first place? Dell can't do two boards with 8 cores on each in 1U and I've got some of those a couple of years old now.
      As for power, with 3 phase, plenty of spare capacity and a good electrician to add more outlets it's not a problem.

  2. Re:Tried to check out the E3 Networks site by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Slightly off-topic, but...

    1. The funny thing about their site design is that about 90% of it could have easily been done with mouseovers and no flash.

    2. None of the text can be highlighted. Lets say that they were the solution for my business, and I just needed to e-mail someone in management a snippet about their site. Too bad. No copy and paste.

    It feels like it's 2001 or 2002 again.