Third Largest Supercomputer... at Weta Digital

Designadrug writes "This story at the BBC details how the worlds third largest supercomputer (conditions apply) lives at Weta Digital - the company that provided CGI effects for The Lord of the Rings movies. The article also goes on to discuss the 500 TeraBytes of data generated for the films and how the epic Battle of Pelennor Fields almost defeated the film itself."

What platform?

[nbvb]

All the thing says is that IBM did the manufacturing ... were they xSeries, pSeries or zSeries? :-)

(I doubt the zSeries.... nobody buys 3300 processors' worth of mainframe :)

File system ?

[kbsingh]

Be interesting to know what kind of a file system they use one something like this, and while they say loads and loads of data was generated - how and in what format was it actually stored.

MySQL is prolly not the best fit in this situation :)

Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

they don't have to go to 'Los Alamos National Lab' or 'Earth simulator' to shoot scene with cool super computer and hundreds of geeks (saves them on extras :-)

3rd Largest?

[binaryDigit]

If they're just counting the number of cpu's available to do a particular task, don't you then have to include things like Googles setup (10000+)?

Re:File system ?

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably won't tell you, as that would give their competitors information.

Re:conditions apply

[Bookcrosser]

things change tooooo quickly these, todays supercomputer is tomorrows laptop

In ten years time kids will be wearing that much power on their wrist and if they don't have a terabyte or two they'll feel left behind.

I was astonished to buy a handheld computer three years ago and realise that it had more computing and better graphics than the early Crays.

But the scary part is that in twenty years, they won't need computers to create orcs and oliphaunts.

Re:conditions apply

[SmackCrackandPot]

Too right ... but progress is good. My supervisor recently bought a laptop - the embedded video card does hardware bump-mapping as well as multi-texturing. Ten years ago you would have been lucky to afford a workstation with that capability.

Today's roomful of rack-mounted systems is tomorrow's server unit.
Today's server unit is tomorrow's workstation.
Today's workstation is tomorrow's desktop.
Todays's desktop to tomorrow's laptop.
Today's laptop is tomorrow's PDA.
Today's PDA is tomorrow's wristwatch.

Re:only number is processor number

[JAPrufrock]

No kidding. Especially since it sounds more like a renderfarm than a single "supercomputer". Then there's the data storage. That's nothing (though I say it myself). Go to high-energy physics for serious storage/processing centers. Little ol' me uses ~15 TB from 4 months of work, and I'm nothing compared to some people's requirements. I use up about 0.4% of our mass storage here (rough guess). WETA's cool - but not in supercomputer/HPC land.

Not just graphics

[surgeonsmate]

Weta also did the model work. I was over in Wellington some months ago and the model for Barad-dur was on display in the foyer of the national museum. About twenty feet high and superbly detailed. Awesome.

They also built the models for the ships used in Master and Commander, but the computer graphics were handled elsewhere.

After seeing these films, I'm going to be very keen indeed to see what these Kiwis can come up with next!

More digital effects = less realism?

[dpbsmith]

"The Return of the King, which had more than 1500 special effects shots in it. By contrast the first movie had only 400 and the second 900."

The funny thing is that personally I lovedthe first movie, really liked the second, and... well... the third movie was pretty good too but seemed a little long.

Many factors could have contributed to this, but after hearing all of Jackson's encomia to model work and miniatures in the DVD "documentaries," I have to wonder whether the increased use of digital effects contributed in some subtle way to some loss of mood or atmosphere or reality in the third movie.

Re:3rd Largest?

[mmusson]

The rendering isn't as interesting to me as the generation of the content. Another article I read said that the system simulates every single person/thing/it on the battle field as discrete entities with their own limited form a intelligence in order to create a more realistic battlefield.

The funny thing was that their first attempts were spectacular failures because they attempted to model things as realistically as possible and the good guys fled the field.

So in the end they reduced the effective intelligence of the good guys until they wouldn't run and then they got what we see now.

Re:Wetta@home

[EnsilZah]

That made me think, how about donating your processor time to render a movie and then getting a discount on the ticket for it?

Re:conditions apply

[mi]

Second question, what could I use that much processing power on my wrist for?

Reliable and personalized weather prediction? Speech generation and recognition? Carry personal and global archives with you -- with quick searches. Detailed mapping of the surrounding area. Laser/hologram generated games, shows, and other entertaintment pointed at your eyes with quality sound aimed into your ears (so as not to disturb others)? Audio and video communication with anyone on the planet (and beyond)?

And last, but not least, the spare cycles can still be donated to SETI@Home, protein folding, and other worthy projects of choice -- those will always be able to use more...

Re:3rd Largest?

[Finuvir]

In fact the Orcs at the back of the fighting could hear the fighting, so they became "afraid" but they weren't close enough to become "frenzied". The net effect was a large-scale fleeing, starting at the back. Apparently it looked just like a real routing.

New Profit Model

[bshroyer]

And I'm serious, here. From the article:

Much better would be to use a Grid-type approach that lets Weta call on processing power where-ever it is and when it needs it.

I'm sure that it's obvious, but so is every other great idea I've ever had. So, here's the business plan:

1. Build a trusted distributed computing project
   
2. Convince your subscribers to allow you to execute arbitrary binary code on their machine, in return for $/CPU cycle
   
3. Lease your grid to movie makers, pharmaceutical companies, mathematicians, or to clandestine weapons developers
   
4. Profit!