Rent A Bit Of Weta Digital

An anonymous reader writes linking to this story at stuff.co.nz, excerpting: "Five hundred powerful computers used by Weta Digital to help create the special effects for the Lord of the Rings may be put up for hire.... The pizza-box sized IBM blade servers each incorporate dual 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors and 6 [gigabytes?] of memory." Update: 03/22 07:08 GMT by S : The linked story says 6 megabytes of memory, we don't believe 'em.

Imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

A beowulf .. oh wait ...

Cost?

[nb caffeine]

What would this cost? Do they charge something like cpu/hours or the like? Will the average person have the ability to rent some clock cycles? I just want something that will be able to run doom3 when it comes out.

Pizza-delivery!

[The_Ace666]

Now where can I find a pizza-delivery company to get one of these babies delivered to my door?

Wow

[KU_Fletch]

A whole 6 megabytes of memory?! Way to beat up my 486.

retirement....

[AngstAndGuitar]

this reminds me of this [despair.com].

Update

[hlopez]

Update: 03/22 07:08 GMT by S
-we don't believe 'YOU-

Woot!

[SillySnake]

Finally a computer able to run the super-ulta-mega high detail Duke Nukem forever! Yes, that's right, the game is finished and just waiting for the computer graphics and processing worlds to catch up to it.. err, right? I mean.. Doom 3! err.. wait.. bah.. Never mind that Still, I would think that unless a company needed results very quickly a seti like application would be much cheaper. If the software guys can code one that can run on the company's network overnight or just at random downtime during the day, then the company ought to save a bunch of money. If they can make it pretty and flash like SETI, then other people might even use it. It just makes more sense to save money in a non-critical manor like that.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I'm signing up right now!

[teamhasnoi]

I'm going to re-fake the moon landing, but do it right this time! No numbers on rocks, no waving flag, or overlapped crosshairs.

I may have to re-release the Mars landing too, depending on how well they did...

Beagle was a great idea, btw. Spend the money and then oops! no mission to render. Sheer genius.

Re:One thing to say...

[MagicDude]

No, we need something nerdier and more useless, like the biggest prime number ever [newscientist.com].

Re:Wow

[xkenny13]

A whole 6 megabytes of memory?!

Yup!! It's amazing what you can accomplish once you get rid of all the bloatware.

Re:Distributed.net...

[bobthemonkey13]

Better yet, let's make a program that makes you pay, has ads, and forces you to donate CPU cycles.

We could call it KaZaA.

LAN Connection ?

[ultranova]

Surely they used Token Ring to connect them ?

Re:LAN Connection ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You try make funny.

You type Tolkien ring next time, you no type Token ring again.

You no funny man, no karma for you.

Re:Pizza-delivery!

[T-Kir]

...and if they don't deliver within a certain time, then hopefully you'll get it for free! :)

Re:Imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I never metabeowulf I didn't like.

Nasty hobbits. They tricked us! Thieves!

[pariahdecss]

Nasty fat hobbit probably sold the extra RAM to buy Twinkies(R)

Re: Rent A Bit of Weta Digital

[Anonymous Coward]

So you DON'T need to get laid.

Re:I'd like to run ray tracing real time on this

[troon]

I'm rather tired of waiting for graphics to progress to the level they will be in in the year 2010 or so.

Just give it six years or so, and you should see the improvements you are waiting for.

Sell 'em on e-bay

[GloomE]

Wouldn't they make more by selling them as (framed) collector's items?
Blade 1 of 500: current bid $1(insert zeros here).

Re:Excuses, excuses

[zcat_NZ]

The time when we need in excess of 640 GB or RAM will be closer than you think. I give it 5 years absolute tops. Probably less.

Depends on how early they get Longhorn out the door, I guess :)

Marketroid Amalgamation.

[Behrooz]

Maybe it's 6MB of L2 or other on-CPU high-speed cache. An odd number, but it makes a lot more sense than any other explanation I can think of.

I'm betting it's another marketroid amalgamation... something along the lines of:

"1MB of L1 cache and 2MB of L2 cache per processor, for a total of 6MB per machine!"

Just like those old '64 bit!' console advertisements. Uhh, yeah, 16 bits pipeline times three pipelines plus two extra 8-bit memory thingamajiggies may add up to 64 bits, but it for damn sure isn't a 64-bit machine.

Re:Lamenting the fall of pizzabox desktops

[Jexx Dragon]

Buy a good 1U rack. Sit it on your desk. Instant "Pizzabox" desktop.

Rather a contrast to the computer they used.....

[zmollusc]

to develop the military tactics used in the battle scenes. Cavelry charge (with lances) against infantry dug into rocks and buildings. Most inept castle defence ever devised. Etc etc. I assume it was all worked out on an unplugged (insert archaic/obscure home computer).

Re:I'd like to run ray tracing real time on this

[Viceice]

you know, if you ONLY wanted so SEE something like that, you could go out doors and look for a field covered in sunflowers.

Re:I'd like to run ray tracing real time on this

[chendo]

I find it absolutely hillarious that the parent post was modded "Informative". Well, unless the moderator didn't know that you can simply go outside and look at a field covered in sunflowers...

Re:I'd like to run ray tracing real time on this

[iwein]

I tried your suggestion and to be honest, compared to the way graphics will look in 2010 or so it looked like shit... i mean there was even _fog_ there...

maybe you have some tips to tweak it to a more acceptable level?