Subject: Re: PARALLEL RENDERING QUESTION
From: Andrew Hofman <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 14:24:43 -0500

>I had this idea the other day.....
>
>Many people using Amiga or PC's have a slave computer such as a DEC 
>alpha, etc to help assist renders.  How about using several older intel
>cpus such as the 386?  You could probably buy a pallete of these things
>for nothing.  If you could say parallel 10 or 20 of them for rendering tasks
>the results may me quite satisfying.  Of course there would have to be
>software to handle such a task.  I dunno, just and idea... Btw, does anything
>like this exist?  Hope this isn't off topic too much.
> 
>Shaodwvex

I have a few concerns about this:

1) RAM: I wouldn't want to run Win95 or NT on a 386, but either OS will
permit faster rendering than Win3.x, as well as better networking. Also
consider that support for Win3.x will gradually fall by the wayside. The
other two OS'es are memory hogs though, so even 32 megs of RAM wouldn't be
enough for many scenes. 48 or 64 megs would be preferable, but another
problem is how many 386's even support that much RAM. Let's say you found a
bunch that did, and installed 64 megs in every one. At around $570 per 16meg
stick, that's $22,800 to equip 10 machines with 64 megs each, or $8800 more
than the cost of a Raptor 3/266 with 64 Megs! (Let's knock the RAM way down:
If you only put 16 megs in each machine, that's $7200 for all 10. Compared
to 64 megs in a single, fast workstation for $2280. And good luck rendering
anything in 16 megs.) 

2) Power Consumption: 10 power supplies, 10 video cards, 10 hard drives,
ethernet cards, etc. Your electric bill would be phenomenal. Don't forget
the constant maintainence!

3) Heat: Even in winter, I'll bet you'd have trouble keeping the room below
85 degrees. I face nearly that problem now, and I'm only running 3 machines!
Your air conditioning bill in the summer? I don't want to think about it.
(Again, it comes down to power consumption.) 

The bottom line? A couple years back, this would have been the way to go.
Before the Screamer, Foundation Imaging had 40-something A4000's in a closet
doing just what you described. But these days, much better solutions exist
for the same (or less) money.

Andy Hofman
LumaQuest Productions           
Animation and Dual Raptor 3 Rendering  
[email-masked]
513-643-7333