The 64 bit revolution

Archiform 3D, an international virtual reality and digital media production company with production facilities on the Gold Coast, has expanded to having even more bits, 64 to be precise. In an extensive upgrade to their render farm and a progressive upgrade of workstations, they have found that the latest in 64 bit processor technology has significant benefits apart from just price and performance.

Being early adopters of Apple PowerMac G5 systems was an easy call, considering the company has a long history with Apple and OSX, which they claim is the only mainstream operating system capable of handling the massive workloads that they impose on their workstations. “A character animation, or an apartment scene can be run on almost any system, but try throwing a detailed exterior landscaped scene at Windows and watch it choke” says Steve Bell, managing director of Archiform 3D. “Apple was letting us down with speed up until the G5, where is then leapfrogged most Pentium boxes not just in speed but in value for money. We now have an almost perfect speed/stability combination.”

But virtual reality companies in the league of Archiform 3D require even more processing horsepower than just workstations and rely of large arrays of computers to process finished renderings. Archiform 3D uses state of the art rendering technology, such as radiosity, which calculates light bouncing from surface to surface. The staggering complexity of these calculations means that the production time for animated scenes can extend beyond acceptable levels unless additional processors are added. This type of an array is usually referred to as a “render farm” and uses the same principle as the world’s fastest supercomputers, whose owners now lean towards many inexpensive machines working together on a project.

Archiform 3D’s render farm, currently “maxing out” at 75 CPUs (that’s the equivalent of 75 of the fastest office PCs) is now being transformed using Athlon64 processors. Maintaining a render farm isn’t like other computer systems. These machines start and run at 100% capacity for their entire life, which is short, and don’t have the often-large periods of inactivity that normal PCs do. So rather than repair the older computers Archiform 3D find themselves replacing computers almost weekly, which also keeps them at the forefront of technology.

The Athlon64 processors are now being introduced quickly in the render farm, with approximately half the systems now being 64 bit based. The question of “why Athlon64” comes up often, considering that Microsoft has yet to release a main stream 64 bit version of Windows and most software, including the network render software that Archiform 3D relies on, is still only 32 bit.

There are significant reasons for the switch, most of which are not as obvious as one may think. The price for such a large array is always a factor, and is what most people think of first, but comparatively the difference in purchase price is only small. Performance is the second most common conclusion, but Archiform 3D states the Pentium 4 still has legs and with Hyperthreading technology can still “outdrag” an Athlon64 in a straight line race. The main reasons for the adoption Athlon 64 based systems hinge on cooling, stability, memory usage and “future-proofing”.

When you handle so many CPUs, and you push them as hard as Archiform 3D does you inadvertently make excessive heat, more than what many people would comprehend. This is due to the constant 100% workload that the CPUs endure, with no pauses while an operator thinks what to do next, or sips coffee. These headless slaves run a marathon that only ends when their ability to keep running does. Archiform 3D finds the Athlon64 runs significantly cooler than the Pentium 4 in these situations, therefore is less prone to crashing, requires less external cooling and is generally more suitable for heavy workloads.

Memory usage is another large factor in the switch. The Pentium 4 uses Hyperthreading to squeeze the most out of it’s chip, making the rendering software see the single processor as not just one CPU but two. This is what gives the Pentium 4 that slight “drag race” edge against the Athlon 64. But there is a downside to this in that the memory usage is also split as though there were 2 CPUs, so a system fitted with 2 Gigabytes of RAM will halve the RAM to each virtual CPU and therefore reduce the actual RAM the current project can fit into. The Athlon 64 is a single CPU with no Hyperthreading, so it’s installed RAM is utilised completely therefore taking the lead on larger renderings, which are becoming more common each day.

“Future proofing” is critical as the new systems are expected to last for two years and it is likely that both Windows and the render software will be 64 bit by then. This means the large scenes that Archiform 3D processes can eventually be run on the render farm, instead of the current patch solution of using the PowerMac G5s, running Mac OSX, for the extremely large scenes.

“ Our clients demand quality, price and speed at the same time, which may seem unfair to most production companies, but we accept it as a simple reality. The key to keeping with their expectation is the sheer power of our render farm, which allows us to spend more time creating great scenes and less time panicking about production deadlines” says Steve Bell, who personally overseas all changes in technology in the company.

Archiform 3D’s work and showreel can be viewed at www.archiform3d.com