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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."

1 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.