An Integrated Computing System for large scale Advanced Rendering & Animation

RenderStream (http://www.renderstream.com) provides innovative solutions for the computer graphics industry. Based on more than ten years of high performance computing in science and engineering, we approach CG in a holistic fashion considering the needs of the artist, technician and organization to attain their product without limitation to their vision and intent. Our systems are custom designed, optimized for the CG process and the secure storage thereof.

In this document we describe an example system that allows the rendering and compositing through workstations using our render farm, all of which is supported by a multi-tier redundant high-speed hybrid gigabit, optical fiber storage network. All systems come with 1-3 year warranties and are manufactured in an ISO-9001 compliant facility.

Working with Austin Business Computers for the render process software we selected the newest versions of Autodesk®Maya™ or 3ds Max® and Toxik™ and for render farm management of the render process we chose Frantic Film’s Deadline® but realize that this can change with the customers’ personal preference. We choose Toxik because we believe it is the best desktop compositing package on the planet but realize that the proper choice of compositing software depends on the application and may adjust our recommendation once we have a more detailed assessment of the customers’ usage model.

The same holds for tape backup. We want to use IBM but there are many choices to meet the customers’
needs and will need you to select the best tool for your use.

From a hardware perspective we propose:

Compositing Systems: Two dual Intel-based quad 3.0+ GHz compositing systems
each with up to 144 GB memory for playing production length video clips at high speed on system
media cache and up to one terabyte local storage using eight RAID0 SATA drives with a separate RAID
system for the boot and applications.

Master Workstations: Ten single or dual Intel-based 5400 or 5500-series quad-core 3.2
GHz workstations with eight to sixteen gigabyte memory and high speed storage using dual 300 GB,
10,000 rpm RAID0 configured SATA drives and two master workstations with eight 300 GB, 10,000 rpm
RAID0 SATA drives to act as Master servers for the render farm.  Each of  these workstations use the NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 3800, 4600, 4700X2, 4800, 5600 or Quadro Plex 5800 professional graphics cards.  We can further boost these systems with the addition of a Tesla™ graphics computer if desired.

Render Farm: For the RenderStream farm we propose using twenty 2.67 GHz Intel-based 920-i7 or 5550-series quad-core render servers with eight to sixteen gigabyte memory (this can be lower depending on your workflow) and high speed storage using dual 150 or 300 GB, 10,000 rpm RAID0 configured SATA drives that are combined in the local fabric with an iSCSI storage via a gigabit (or optional Infiniband) backplane for local storage and are supplemented by the RenderStream Masters. These servers are mounted in a 4U rackmount case providing room for the addition of a graphics card that can be used for advanced compositing or render application acceleration when it becomes available.
This provides the capability of making each server process 4X to 100X times faster. A 1U rackmount case can be used if graphics cards are not required. All these systems (compositing, render workstations and render servers) are compliant with DirectX 10.1, Shader 4.0 and OpenGL 2.1.

Our systems are built for stability and speed. To gain the most value from your resources and your
imagination we believe that you must have the ability to realize your vision in a timely fashion thus
reducing time to market while providing the ability to stretch the limits of your art. As a benchmark we
offer the following example from Buckward Images of Houston, TX. In this study Buck saw a 15X
improvement in render times using a RenderStream 3.2 GHz dual quad-core master with two RAID0 300

GB 10,000 rpm drives, eight gigabyte of memory and a Quadro FX 4600 graphics card. Similarly the RenderStream servers using a single quad core processor made the render 7.5X faster than Buck’s dual 2.8 GHz Xeon systems.

For storage we propose a Petabyte capable multi-tier redundant and multi-pathway combination of high
speed fiber array for high speed access to short term storage and iSCSI for long term storage with tape backup for archiving. Fiber array options use Bright Systems or RenderStream’s Supermicro based system. The backplane for the  this network is gigabit Ethernet with gigabit-to-optical fiber layer-3 managed switches for the RenderStream Masters, Servers and local iSCSI and an all optical fiber network fabric for the RenderStream Compositing systems and redundant multi-tiered storage system. The management software for this system is OpenE and was selected for its robustness and ease of use; however, again we understand that you may have other preferences and we will work with you to meet your needs.

As you can see RenderStream and Austin Business Computers offer you a robust and powerful  integrated world class software-hardware system for your animation work. Our systems come with full industry standard warranties and the knowledgeable  support of the RenderStream team. We look forward to developing a final solution and providing a quote tailored to your
needs.

For more information please visit http://www.renderstream.com/products

Thank you.