[ Thanks to Paul
Petricevich for this link. ]
“Wellington-based Weta Digital’s ability to process work on
the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy has just dramatically improved
– with big savings to boot. Weta has bought 16 dual-processor SGI
1200 servers running the Linux operating system.”
“The servers will convert object, environment, and motion data
into photo-realistic images and blend them with live action for
final scene production – a process known as rendering.”
“SGI account manager Scott Houston said the Linux cluster
created for Weta is doing work which previously required
multi-processor Unix servers costing over $1 million. “It’s high
performance with low overhead and low cost. It’s all about bangs
for bucks. …[Weta chief technical officer Jon] Labrie said being
able to run this on Linux drastically reduced the costs involved,
and was a watershed for the animation industry.”