3 ms·

Not really, because the first Xeon CPU he compares against is ten years old. That kind of system isn't worth the cost of shipping it somewhere. A current genera

Not really, because the first Xeon CPU he compares against is ten years old. That kind of system isn't worth the cost of shipping it somewhere. A current generation desktop i3 is likely faster in almost any workload. It's not even interesting that the M1 is "slightly" beaten by a Mac Pro's Xeon, because nobody is doing raytracing on CPUs. A Pascal nvidia GPU will render scenes in Blender faster than a current mid-tier AMD CPU, and it's two generations old. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-290-rtx3080&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=blender-... It takes an RTX 3080 card (not even the fastest consumer Ampere card) 11 seconds to render a scene that the fastest Pascal card (1080) took 94 seconds. That's nearly an order of magnitude faster. I saw an article comparing the M1 Max to a high end AMD card, but that's also meh. AMDs's GPUs don't perform anywhere near as well as Ampere and they use far more power, so they're an easy target to compare against. AMD fakes their benchmarks by overclocking the cards depending on temperature, and the benchmarks they run to tout performance figures are just shy of where the card starts to throttle back for thermals. An AMD GPU that has been running for an hour will perform substantially worse compared to an Ampere card.

dagmx 5y ago
Almost every Blockbuster film you watch has raytracing done on the CPU. A lot of studios have dabbled with GPU pathtracing, and indeed it works for smaller projects like commercials and TV. However big set pieces just don't jive well with GPU rendering, and most GPU path tracers are too young to feature all the bells and whistles productions want.
hunterloftis 5y ago
> It's not even interesting that the M1 is "slightly" beaten by a Mac Pro's Xeon, because _nobody is doing raytracing on CPUs._ This is backwards - Nearly all major raytracing workloads today are done primarily on CPUs: vfx, animated film and tv, etc. There are several reasons for this, including memory limits and the lack of coherence in both path tracing algorithms and common acceleration structures. GPU-based tracing is currently a small subset of rendering tasks (primarily those with real-time requirements). As GPU memory increases, GPUs will become more attractive in this space - likely in the next few years.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  Final renders may be done on CPU for maximum accuracy, but that's not what is being discussed. What's being discussed is desktop workstation rendering. Mental Ray, heavily used in the industry for feature films: GPU accelerated since eleven years ago. Pixar licensed a bunch of GPU rendering tech from NVIDIA in 2015, so that's six years ago. Autodesk Arnold After Effects Chaos V-Ray Weta Gazebo and Manuka ...all GPU accelerated for three years or so.
  - berkut 5y ago
    Mental ray is no longer heavily used in the industry for feature films: it hasn't been since ~2013 (when Arnold came around). After Effects doesn't really belong on this list? Gazebo is a preview renderer explicitly designed for GPU use, it's not designed for accurate lighting or material look. Manuka is not GPU accelerated (it used to be when first written, but it wasn't worth it given complexity of build setup for very little benefit, it's pure CPU now and has been for > 7 years). Until the GPU renderers can run custom shaders (rather than just the stock shaders the renderers ship with), i.e. OSL supports full GPU support, high end VFX facilities aren't really using GPU renderers that much for final lookdev and lighting. Smaller facilities which are happy using the stock shaders are though.
    - KennyBlanken 5y ago
      > Mental ray is no longer heavily used in the industry for feature films You didn't say "feature films", you said "film and TV." You're goalpost-shifting / no-true-scotsman'ing. > it hasn't been since ~2013 (when Arnold came around). The Arnold I mentioned that is GPU accelerated? Or a different Arnold? Just checking. > high end VFX facilities Again with the goalpost shifting / no-true-scotsman-ing > aren't really using GPU renderers that much for final lookdev and lighting. They doing that rendering work on laptops? What is the article talking about? Server farm hardware? We're done here.
      - berkut 5y ago
        I think you're confusing me for the other poster - that was the first time I've responded to you... I haven't moved any goalposts. Arnold has only been GPU accelerated for a few years - not since 2013. Same with Renderman - XPU only came out this year, and still doesn't support everything on the GPU, including custom shaders (like Arnold GPU doesn't).
jb1991 5y ago
CPU ray tracing is still widely used in the movie business. Might change eventually but most CGI scenes are ray traced on CPUs.
Anhao 5y ago
> because nobody is doing raytracing on CPUs. Nobody is doing realtime raytracing on CPUs. The author is talking about production ray tracing rendering working with scenes that won't fit in most workstation GPUs.

dagmx 5y ago

Almost every Blockbuster film you watch has raytracing done on the CPU. A lot of studios have dabbled with GPU pathtracing, and indeed it works for smaller projects like commercials and TV. However big set pieces just don't jive well with GPU rendering, and most GPU path tracers are too young to feature all the bells and whistles productions want.

hunterloftis 5y ago

> It's not even interesting that the M1 is "slightly" beaten by a Mac Pro's Xeon, because _nobody is doing raytracing on CPUs._ This is backwards - Nearly all major raytracing workloads today are done primarily on CPUs: vfx, animated film and tv, etc. There are several reasons for this, including memory limits and the lack of coherence in both path tracing algorithms and common acceleration structures. GPU-based tracing is currently a small subset of rendering tasks (primarily those with real-time requirements). As GPU memory increases, GPUs will become more attractive in this space - likely in the next few years.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
Final renders may be done on CPU for maximum accuracy, but that's not what is being discussed. What's being discussed is desktop workstation rendering. Mental Ray, heavily used in the industry for feature films: GPU accelerated since eleven years ago. Pixar licensed a bunch of GPU rendering tech from NVIDIA in 2015, so that's six years ago. Autodesk Arnold After Effects Chaos V-Ray Weta Gazebo and Manuka ...all GPU accelerated for three years or so.
- berkut 5y ago
  Mental ray is no longer heavily used in the industry for feature films: it hasn't been since ~2013 (when Arnold came around). After Effects doesn't really belong on this list? Gazebo is a preview renderer explicitly designed for GPU use, it's not designed for accurate lighting or material look. Manuka is not GPU accelerated (it used to be when first written, but it wasn't worth it given complexity of build setup for very little benefit, it's pure CPU now and has been for > 7 years). Until the GPU renderers can run custom shaders (rather than just the stock shaders the renderers ship with), i.e. OSL supports full GPU support, high end VFX facilities aren't really using GPU renderers that much for final lookdev and lighting. Smaller facilities which are happy using the stock shaders are though.
  - KennyBlanken 5y ago
    > Mental ray is no longer heavily used in the industry for feature films You didn't say "feature films", you said "film and TV." You're goalpost-shifting / no-true-scotsman'ing. > it hasn't been since ~2013 (when Arnold came around). The Arnold I mentioned that is GPU accelerated? Or a different Arnold? Just checking. > high end VFX facilities Again with the goalpost shifting / no-true-scotsman-ing > aren't really using GPU renderers that much for final lookdev and lighting. They doing that rendering work on laptops? What is the article talking about? Server farm hardware? We're done here.
    - berkut 5y ago
      I think you're confusing me for the other poster - that was the first time I've responded to you... I haven't moved any goalposts. Arnold has only been GPU accelerated for a few years - not since 2013. Same with Renderman - XPU only came out this year, and still doesn't support everything on the GPU, including custom shaders (like Arnold GPU doesn't).

jb1991 5y ago

CPU ray tracing is still widely used in the movie business. Might change eventually but most CGI scenes are ray traced on CPUs.

Anhao 5y ago

> because nobody is doing raytracing on CPUs. Nobody is doing realtime raytracing on CPUs. The author is talking about production ray tracing rendering working with scenes that won't fit in most workstation GPUs.