BOXXLABS

Greetings all -

Andrew, I will have to respectfully disagree with your assumption that our solution represents no better value for dedicated rendering than any other rackmounted PC...

I don't want to turn this into a sales pitch (i don't work for our sales or marketing departments) BUT...

renderBOXX was conceived, engineered and is sold specifically with distributed rendering as it's sole purpose.

Its design allows it to use the highest performing components but achieve much better computing & power efficiency than any other other solution.

And, with our approach, you can fit five (5) renderBOXX 10200 units (that's 80 cores) in about 4 RU's (rack units) of space. That's 5" tall x 30" deep in a 19" wide standard equipment rack. That's insane "compute density" compared to the alternatives.

Plus, our renderBOXX 10200 units also have a very powerful IPMI implementation that makes remote adminitration of these nodes a breeze. You can even turn on/off the systems remotely - install/update software or EVEN reload the OS...all from a remote location.

A the end of the day, we feel that this approach is the most cost-effective for those looking at building a dedicated renderfarm. Yes, more cost-effective than simply using "a bunch of PCs".


As for the ArtVPS stuff, I believe do they are discontinuing their hardware-based rendering "appliances" and becoming a software-only product - bundling standard mental ray "stand alone" licenses with their very elegant and easy to use queue management software.

Their raybox/rayserver/pure technology was very fast in its day, but the requirment to use only specially-compiled MR and Renderman shaders really put a limit on what you could do from a creative perspective. The "look" that was generated, while quite realistic, was very limited compared to standard software rendering approaches. Scanline & particles & dynamics were out of the question - as were new algorithms such as AO and FG.

Plus, as multicore CPUs have become standard equipment in practically all PCs and workstations, the cost/performance benefits for using the ARTVPS's custom-designed raytracing chips have been marginalized.

my $.02

Adam
BOXXlabs

AJLynn

Oh, come on now. I'm not saying your rackmounts aren't very good, but every hardware vendor and his grandmother's shoe store has a good rackmount solution these days. You'll have customers for whom your solution works out to be the best, and there will also be customers who will benefit most from somebody else's system or from a bunch of PCs in a corner.

BOXXLABS

That's true. If all one needs are a few extra processing cores for a small studio, then yes, I would agree that a few towers in the corner may well be the most cost-effective way to go.

But if your business's plans for expansion include developing and growing a dedicated rendering capability then that approach probably isn't very effective...

I'm just saying that there are some real, engineering-driven differences between tower PC's or standard rack-mounted "servers" vs. a product like the renderBOXX 10200.

With all due respect, to simply lump them all into a single category isn't fair and it isn't accurate.

ok , ok...enough of the sales pitch. I'm here to learn and share just like everybody else on these forums. I dno't want to bog-down the thread with this, but just wanted folks to know that there are real differences to learn about if one is so-inclined...



Peace.

BrianKitts

Adam.... don't take this as an attack, but since you opened up, I'd be curious to hear your opinion on a few things that have caught my curiosity ever since I checked out the lastest renderboxxes......


I see this as the biggest selling point to the renderBOXX I dig the layout, and I think I read somewhere that their configuration is made to be a more efficient use of power, but I would love to see a power consumption test to prove it, other wise it's just words that in todays green market it just sounds like good advertising to me if it isn't backed up.

moot point in my opinion, most rackmounted or blade/server node systems can handle this

what part do you consider cost effective if an identically spec'd rackmounted server blade from Dell costs a over $1000 less ?

__________________
Brian Kitts
ANSHEN + ALLEN

BOXXLABS

Hi Brian,

Thanks for asking...those are very good questions.


Because we are essentially putting two dual-quad computers (16 cores) in the same chassis, we can leverage extra efficiency by sharing the cooling and power supply systems between both units. (yes, a single renderBOXX 10200 unit is seen by the network and/or your rendering engine as two separate 8-core rendernodes)

This means that is takes less energy to cool the hardware and that the power supplies run at a higher current - and thus a high power efficiency rating when compared to two separate HP or DELL rackmounted 8-core "servers".

As far as getting DELL or HP nodes with the same performance, features and capabilities for anything close to the same price...I would have to see a quote to believe it...

Their "blade" servers have a very high price point for entry and come loaded with relatively costly features (such as redundancy, fibre channel/infiniband, hot swap, etc) which are of marginal value for applications such as distributed rendering. Even still, our product beats theirs in terms of computing density - the number of cores you can fit in a rack.

The other big part about all this that matters to many people is that we ONLY sell our products to VFX and archiViz facilities. It's our only business and sole focus. Our sales and support teams are TRAINED TO HELP SOLVE YOUR 3D and Architectual Visualization challenges.

If you call our tech support line with a problem that turns out to be related to Backburner or VRAY, we're gonna help you figure out & troubleshoot the issue. no questions asked and no additional fees.

Will Dell? Will HP? Do they even have a clue what "Backburner' IS???

The answer is no.


I would be happy to provide some additional data if you contact me directly.

aglick@boxxtech.com

Cheers,

Adam

AJLynn

Wait, is this 10200 a new product? It looks like it could actually be pretty useful. If I'm reading this right, if I go to the configurator on the web site with the default options for $5825, that's actually the price of 2 nodes with 8 cores and 8GB each? That's actually reasonably competitive if you need that much power. Now how cool do you need to keep the ambient temperature? You must be walking a pretty fine line when you're cooling 4 Xeons in that much space...

But what I think it's important to say (and I say it all the time and see people not realizing this a lot) is that 16 cores worth of computers that are advertised as being for rendering don't render any better than 16 cores of computers that are not advertised as being for rendering. You can get more cores in that space than some other vendors, but they are the same cores.

BOXXLABS

heh, yup...there is ALOT of heat generated by 4 quadcore CPUs each putting off 120 watts. It was actually a formidable engineering challenge to move the heat out of the chassis.

We solved it through the use of very efficient (and very high speed) fans and carefully designed airflow channeling. Thank god these units are not designed to be used desk-side...'cause with 12K rpm fans, they are pretty damn loud once they come under processing load.

AJLynn

12,000 RPM??? That explains a lot. Hmmm, maybe I'll just build a wind tunnel for my next system

Mike.

SuperMicro do sell blades whith 16 cores in each 1U blade.....2 motherboards, two systems... in one U.
Dell does not want to do this because of overheating (it's what dell's engineer told me at the phone when i was negociating).
and if you compare the renderboxx solution to another, whith the same core number, the renderboxx is far more expensive.

Two little questions...
what is the advantage of choosing a rackmount solution rather than a blade solution, (knowing that it is a lot more expensive, whatever the dealer is) ?
do the renderboxx 6000$ nodes contain 16 cores each ?

thanks

BrianKitts

I didn't realize the boxx was for 16 cores, so 16 for 9k does beat the 8 for 6k. I retract my initial comment about price. That's awesome.

Both companies have their benefits, no Dell doesn't know what backburner is..... on the other hand if I have a problem with backburner I'm calling autodesk, not dell. (actually I'd post here but you get the point) On the other hand, If I call Boxx at 10:00pm on sunday night cause my machine won't start and I have a deadline in 6 hours.... will anyone answer, Dell will.

(at least it won't be hillary answering)

__________________
Brian Kitts
ANSHEN + ALLEN