The power behind LucasFilm magic – News.BBC.co.uk: The BBC takes a look at the hardware behind their data centers for rendering CGI effects.
The data centre at LucasFilm is mammoth – scores of racks holding number crunching processors and hard drives filled with special effects – stretch off into the distance.
“At the time it was built, in 2004, it was the world’s largest 10-gigabit backbone network in the world,” explains Peter Hricak, senior manager for network and telecoms at LucasFilm. “We have a theoretical network capacity of 11.38 terabits per second,” he adds.
The centre has gone through three generations of rack-mounted computers in just three years. The racks are suitably black, forbidding and each blade in the rack is labeled Death Star.
“All of our render farms are named Death Stars – we have also silk screened the imperial logo on all of the nodes, regardless of the vendor that provides them,” explains Mr. Hricak.
“Although we have 250 terabytes, one year from now none of the data on these discs will be here anymore,” says Mr. Hricak.
“The data will be archived to tape, sent to studios and kept in our vaults. We’re generating 10 terabytes of new data each day.”
And keeping those systems running at the right temperate is 25-tonnes of coolant in 32 air conditioning units, flanking the centre itself.
As you can note in the last paragraph, cooling a data center is quite a challenge and now all the major hardware manufacturers are establishing initiatives to reduce the power requirements and the heat output of data centers, not only as a selling point, but also to be more environmentally friendly.
But do they fold?
When you have the power to destroy an entire planet, what good is folding?
I feel a disturbance in the Force.
You know, I was hoping that this article would talk about the thousands of illegal slave shop workers Lucas film “hires” in S. Korea. But no…So Luas can’t make any good movies, ruins the entire industry in the process, and now we find ourselves discussing his server farm ? What’s next… What LucasFilm eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner ?
Let’s talk about how cheesy those fx look on blue screen. Now that is an article worth my reading.
If you look at the floor, you’ll note that the cooling system is the kind where cool air is pumped beneth the tile and then filters up into the room. While effective, this system isn’t exactly free.
That being said, if you’ve got the money for new servers every year, you’ve got the money to pay for the AC. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but it’s not a major tipping point in the industry.
If Moore’s law holds, how long before I can get this in a notebook?
All they need now is an AI capable of making decent plot lines.
#5 James Hill
I am starting to wonder if you just make everything up or you are just completely misinformed.
From what I remember after visiting……the vents above the aisles is where the cold air was coming from. I don’t recall there being that many vents in the floor but I never bothered to notice the cooling system because I couldn’t hear myself think.
I could be wrong but I just don’t remember it that way. Besides since when does cold air filter up? What you are talking about seems to be something of poor design since it would require more energy to push the cold air up instead of letting it fall down.
I like his theater at Skywalker Ranch.
#9 B Dog
Which one the private one or the Stag? The Stag seemed to be just a regular theater except really good sound.
#8 – Are you a moron? I wasn’t asking, I was explaining.
We have that very setup in the lab at my office. The false floor is about a foot above the concrete floor, and cool air is pumped into the space between the two to be circulated through the entire lab.
The reason it is done this way is that it’s less expensive than running the amount of duct work needed to cool a lab/server room, and the air moving from the floor up promotes the heat radiated from the machines to move directly up… not out and up (which would increase the heat on the machines).
Likewise, the cooling system in a room like that is on all of the time… not like the system in a home. That means a constant cycle of air, always moving in the same direction.
Another day, another DU reader owned.
#11 James Hill
“Are you a moron?”
Were you looking in the mirror when you typed that?
First off you did not own me. Second I didn’t suggest that you were asking anything. Learn to read please it would help.
I will admit I was not familiar with the forced air design. It seems rather inefficient to me and my friend at LF assures me it IS but it is more effective for cooling.
Now on the other hand you are wrong. It is not cheaper than and overhead system because they usually require plenum-rated cabling and several other special things. The advantage he said was that they can focus the airflow more accurately and if they move racks around it is much easier to correct the flow. It was NOT because it was cheaper to do.
So to clarify for you. You are correct they use a forced air system that is floor based. It is NOT cheaper and it is less efficient than an overhead system BUT it does allow better control.
So you are really more like 1 for 3 and I am 2 for 3 In my book You still lose.
#12 – You continue to fail, and you continue to be owned.
Your friend’s opinion means dick: Once again, this system is at my office today. I have first hand knowledge of how it works and why the system was chosen.
An overhead system can be aimed just as well as an in-floor system, but the cost of running duct work in an already finished office building… where the vast majority of these systems are installed… make an overhead system impractical.
Likewise, since the system is always on, it is more efficient. The system does not need restart time, nor is it tuned to cool a hot room: It is designed to keep a room at a specific temperature, which is much easier to do by forcing air up from the floor.
Honestly, it’s time for you to shut the fuck up. You’ve lost on all counts.
#13 James Hill
My friend works at Lucas Film and since that is the system we are talking about I think his opinion is a little more valid than yours.
It is no more expensive when installing a dedicated cooling system to use over head cooling vents. instead of the forced air floor system
You keep making the assuming that an overhead system only runs some of the time therefore is more efficient. YOU ARE WRONG!
When you have to force cold air up it requires more energy. It is simple physics JAMES!!!!!! If you have air conditioners on the roof and you blow the cold air down it requires less energy.
Instead of being an insufferable prick maybe you ought to stop and think for a moment.
One of the reasons you are so stupid is that you think you know everything therefore need to learn nothing. I admitted you were correct that they had a forced air floor system and learned about something I did not know existed. You on the other hand you have learned nothing and still deny the reality of debate.
#14 – On behalf of everyone at DU, I call bullshit on your claim. If your friend worked at Lucas Films, you would have stated that to begin with.
Also, in the second paragraph of #14, you contradict your previous post.
Likewise, I didn’t claim that it takes more or less energy… I only claimed that it costs less to keep a room cool than it does to cool it down, which you cannot refute. Further, the cost of installation and the cost of operation are two different things… of which we were talking about the former.
You’ve been owned. For a third time. Bitch.
#2 you could save the person to replace Bill. George et cetera.
#10 (J): I don’t know about the private theater. I wanted to post this cool scaled down version, but figured it was too much of a stretch from the rendering farm topic.
#15 James Hill
Ok.
#17 B.Dog
The picture in that link doesn’t look like the stag theater. It looks more like the private one. I know the picture says he modeled after the stag but The stag is much bigger and the chairs are not as bulky as that picture. 🙂 I have been in quite a few home theaters and people are really going all out these days. $250,000 is not uncommon around here.
Well, in my experience visiting several dozen smaller data centers at various hospitals in the Chicago area over the years, here is what I found out about environmental control.
For a standard 1 story room, convection is a non issue due to the high circulation volume of the cooling system.
Most of the centers used a “floor blowing up” circulation system. I think it is designed mostly to annoy the technicians in the center working. That cold air blowing up your pant legs all day sucks. A couple of the smaller rooms used vents on the walls blowing sideways. Those looked like they were done that way because they were shoehorning a small data center into an existing spot.
They last thing any medical data center operator worries about is the cost to operate the center. ALL they care about is uptime.
Anyways, what an awesome setup they have at Lucasfilm. I just wonder where all they old hardware goes every year?
Don