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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: 0s | 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. dahart ◴[02 Jan 21 21:46 UTC] No.25616851[source]▶
> Can anyone comment on why Pixar uses standard CPU for processing instead of custom hardware or GPU?

A GPU enabled version of RenderMan is just coming out now. I imagine their farm usage after this could change.

https://gfxspeak.com/2020/09/11/animation-studios-renderman/

I’m purely speculating, but I think the main reason they haven’t been using GPUs until now is that RenderMan is very full featured, extremely scalable on CPUs, has a lot of legacy features, and it takes a metric ton of engineering to port and re-architect well established CPU based software over to the GPU.

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2. Moru ◴[03 Jan 21 12:23 UTC] No.25621369[source]▶
Isn't CPU's sturdier too? GPU's running 24/7 is rumored to not be working very well after a few years.