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Pixar's Render Farm

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382 points brundolf | 2 comments | 02 Jan 21 19:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.013s | source
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mmcconnell1618 ◴[02 Jan 21 20:48 UTC] No.25616372[source]▶
Can anyone comment on why Pixar uses standard CPU for processing instead of custom hardware or GPU? I'm wondering why they haven't invested in FPGA or completely custom silicon that speeds up common operations by an order of magnitude. Is each show that different that no common operations are targets for hardware optimization?
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1. colordrops ◴[02 Jan 21 21:02 UTC] No.25616493[source]▶
I'm "anyone" since I know very little about the subject but I'd speculate that they've done a cost-benefit analysis and figured that would be overkill and tie them to proprietary hardware, so that they couldn't easily adapt and take advantage of advances in commodity hardware.
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2. CyberDildonics ◴[02 Jan 21 21:22 UTC] No.25616660[source]▶
GPUs are commodity hardware, but you don't have to speculate, this was answered well here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616527