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Pixar's Render Farm

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382 points brundolf | 1 comments | 02 Jan 21 19:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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. Arelius ◴[04 Jan 21 19:18 UTC] No.25636451[source]▶
Honestly? Because they have a big legacy in CPU code, and because of mostly political reasons they haven't invested in making their GPU (Realtime preview) renderer production ready till very recently. There are some serious technical challenges to solve, and not having GPUs with tons of ram among them, but the investment to solve them hasn't really been there yet.