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Where does Pixar say they use company laptops while they are idle?
by jdboyd 11y ago
Where does Pixar say they use company laptops while they are idle?
- mryan 11y agoI've not read about Pixar doing this, but I found it interesting that IKEA does: http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/building_3d_with_ikea http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpe...
- virmundi 11y agoYea, I can't find Pixar doing this. I thought I remembered an article from years ago. Other companies did it as well. https://books.google.com/books?id=QxAEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA51&ots=MJAXAN7zms&dq=rendering%20movie%20idle%20pcs&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q=rendering%20movie%20idle%20pcs&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=QxAEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA51&ots=... But they might since RenderMan supports it, http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/tractor/tractor_nimby.html http://renderman.pixar.com/resources/current/tractor/tractor...
- raverbashing 11y ago> Yea, I can't find Pixar doing this Maybe because it doesn't make sense to copy a lot of model/texture data to/from a slow laptop for processing.
- njharman 11y agoThe data is small compared to processing required. Laptops aren't that slow. They are as fast as the fastest "servers" from a few/several years ago. Finally, most employees proly don't have laptops, OP misspoke.
- tehmaco 11y agoI remember reading years ago that every machine in the building was linked into the render farm. So the person on the front desk had a dual socket, multi-GB RAM monster of a machine, but only used it for light email/room bookings/contact management. But when render jobs were running, the PC was under 100% load. I'm not sure it'd work so well with laptops due to the battery life issue, as render jobs are presumably running 24/7. A quick search hasn't turned anything up though...
- seanp2k2 11y agoIt seems like it'd be a lot more cost-effective to have a dedicated box in a place with proper power / network / cooling and give reception an iPad or MacBook Air, but I think in general the idea of using idle CPUs is cool.
- Wilya 11y agoIt's pretty common for 3D/rendering companies to use company desktops at night or when they are idle for rendering, and most renderfarm managers support this kind of setup. However, this is only worth it because the graphists already have powerful workstations to do their job. I doubt using underpowered laptops would make sense.
- jgalt212 11y agoChase did this way back in the late 90's in the derivatives department. One day a number of traders and salespeople were complaining that their machines were all running slow. It turned out this was because the swaptions and exotics desks were running Monte Carlo simulations on everyones' machines. After that, stealing cycles from co-workers machines was relegated to non-business hours.
- gadders 11y agoIt's pretty common now. I think both Data Synapse and IBM Platform Symphony both let you do this.