HP has announced that two world-leading visual effects companies have selected HP blade server technology to increase production of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and drive cost-saving data centre initiatives.
CGI is used as visual effects in films, television programmes and video games. With CGI, development of a typical 90-minute film often requires the production and storage of more than two million hours of digitally created content.
With high-performance computing blade solutions from HP, visual effects companies are now able to produce larger volumes of digital content much faster and more cost-effectively.
Australia-based Animal Logic is the visual effects creator for the motion pictures Happy Feet, 300 and Australia. As the company approached maximum capacity in its data centre, it turned to HP for servers that would be more energy- and space-efficient without sacrificing system performance.
Animal Logic’s upcoming animated film, Guardians of Ga'Hoole, will be created using 1,000 HP ProLiant BL2x220c server blades housed within HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures. The film is expected to be released in the summer of 2010.
Paprikaas is part of the global Technicolor business and a strategic partner of DreamWorks Animation. When its Bangalore, India, data centre was out of available power and nearly out of physical space, the company turned to HP for energy-saving server technologies.
Paprikaas chose HP ProLiant BL460c G5 servers to increase performance and establish an energy-efficiency standard in its data centre.
“The production demands of our business were pushing the power and space limits of our current data centre, so we faced a significant challenge – either build out another data centre or find an energy-efficient server alternative," said Nandish Domlur, chief executive officer, Paprikaas. “With the HP Proliant BL460c, we’ve increased our available compute capacity significantly without increasing our total power draw a single watt.”
Powered by 240 ProLiant BL460c servers, Paprikaas’ production system placed on the recent TOP500 List of the world’s fastest supercomputers.