Re: Introduction

Dear Paul...

I am not a 3D experts.....I am more specialized on clustering 
solution....but OK, I'll give it a try to bring some hints...

> What renderer do you use, why do you like it, what don't you like in
> it? This is not a renderer war, it is just a gauge of what the users
> think.

If you are limited on budget and would like to consider open source 
solution, try Aqsis. Go to http://aqsis.sourceforge.net for complete 
details.....

> If we choose a render engine like Mental Ray (though Brazil is
> favoured by my IT guy...) is it worth investing in more cluster boxes
> or more ram per box? John Hearns suggested dual opteron 2 GB ram
> solutions, which seems to be a good price/performance solution. But,
> should one go for 1 MB or 2 MB L2 cache on those computers? As an old
> IT-student I'd say bigger cache wins, but price/performance do
> matter, and is the win that big?

Well, IMHO, bigger L2 cache is always a plus. But, we do know that cache 
is only helpful if there are big percentage of cache hit.....in other 
word, the most used instructions and data need to be fit well inside 
the cache and the program tends to prevents cache thrashing (e.g 
because there are many data write which invalidates the cache 
frequently)

So, in short...I guess the best solution is to rent an experimental box 
from a vendor and do profiling against your preferred application (e.g 
renderer) and see which one gives you better cache hit based on your 
estimated workload. Use :
-LPerfex ( http://www.osc.edu/~troy/lperfex/oldversions.html)
or
- OProfile (http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/examples/)
to help you gathering important statistics....

> I'm also thinking middle of the road opterons, since the price jump
> for a couple of hundred extra MHz often is way out of proportion from
> the gains in processing speed.

Perhaps...you could consider AMD Althlon MP? Cheaper...and SMP ready....
Anyway, do you need really 64 bit application?

> Do you guys on this list use Linux exclusively, or do you more or
> less use linux for rendering farms?

Linux is frequently used on high end renderfarm...maybe because three 
reasons : cheap , open source and reliable. However, sometimes you need 
to tweak the Linux kernel, along with the applications itself to gain 
fastest perfomance. But you must also pay attention about application 
compatibility with certain Linux distribution. Always spend enough time 
to ensure the compatibility, because if not, you might end up with 
frequent crash/hang

And last...for batch queueing program, try to consider DrQueue, SunGrid 
Engine, or openPBS. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses....but I 
heard SGE is getting popular for handling renderfarm jobs.

regards

Mulyadi Santosa



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