Dumb Idea....

S

sonisfear

Well-known member
Here is a dumb idea...if NLE programmers could do it I would pay big bucks for it.

Microsoft and Sony are soon to release ridiculously powerful gaming machines in the $400.00 range that you could not buy even if you wanted too for thousands of dollars.

Xbox 360 I think has 3 x 3.2 ghz cpu on a dualtreaded motherboard wrap in a delicious tiny white case... This unit practically runs windows already (we'll See when I get mine). As well as is WMVHD ready

PS3 has some sort of quad cell technology ...and is Blu Ray (not an expert on this just a rough idea)

Both have nasty insane rendering power for pennies in ratio.
Why not write a NLE render farm agent program for these one or both of these units?

I would run out and buy 4 in one shot. imagine the rendering farm power for $1,600.00 bucks.
 
But what will this mac cost? this is the question. you could probably buy 10 xbox's for the price of one of these Mac's. Totally guessing of course.

A total of 30 3.2 gHZ processors as compared to 4.

I am not saying to edit on these machines although the video cards are crazy in these gaming machine. Just distributed rendering.
 
Ummm, no.

This idea probably could work, but it wouldn't be available to the average Joe's like us. Plus, there's a lot more to having just a few PS3's or XBOX 360's as a render farm, they'd need an O/S of some kind and they'd probably need to be tweaked with hardware wise. All consoles do is calculate graphical data, nothing else.
 
sonis,
there is some possibility for using Xbox's, but with lots of mods / hacks. i have hacked my xbox to allow for installing BIGGER hard drives, so I can copy games directly. it also allows for tunneling (similar to xbox live, but way better). i have even run linux on one of my hacked xbox's! i have heard of people building cluster servers out of xbox's, but it takes losts of effort and mods. its no suprise that the controller connection is a modified USB port, which can easily be adapted to use USB keyboards + mice. all we can do is wait and see...

-intro
 
What I find interesting is that Apple is abandoning longtime partner IBM and the PowerPC to go with Intel processors in 2006 (IBM's delivery problems and G5 running too hot for Powerbook use being the dealbreaker.)
Microsoft has chosen IBM's PowerPC for Xbox360 - codenamed Xenon, but I wonder how different it really is from the existing G5 since the demo xBox360 at E3 this year was actually running on the G5?
Add Apple's Qmaster software to the mix for easily creating render farms, and maybe all that needs to be done is for someone to hack the current PPC OS X and make an Xbox version for Qmaster?
 
There is a reason a console has that price point... it is meant for running games. The CPU's are specifically designed with game design in mind.. so the pipeline's, the amount of chip registers, the available cache(if any) etc.. are all tailored to game development.

Game code is usually very linear by design, execution in order is far faster than the way most OO programs, thats Object Oriented programs, are designed.

The consoles are not meant for fast data retrieval from harddrives... they are meant to process code quickly.

Insane rendering power means squat when doing video work. The GPU and Pixel/Vertex shader units can process the living hell out of the game data and spit out some beautiful imagery, but realtime calculations are a far cry from video data. 3D engines can render such awesome imagery because they are designed for that; fill a buffer with pixel data, pump it to the screen, wash rinse repeat.. Once you add in 'Read from Data Storage device', things get more complex.

I am almost positive that the Xbox 360 CPU very close to a complete re-design, of course it probably uses similar technology gleaned from the 970 line of PPC's
 
All consoles do is calculate graphical data, nothing else.
Click to expand...

And what does a Render Farm do? Calculate graphical data!

The idea is very good, and if Linux can be installed in a Xbox, there is no reason someone can't do it.

They need first to arrive the consoles, to get one, to hack it and then to make them Qmaster compatible. Mmmm... :smiley_up :smiley_up
 
dashwood said:
What I find interesting is that Apple is abandoning longtime partner IBM and the PowerPC to go with Intel processors in 2006 (IBM's delivery problems and G5 running too hot for Powerbook use being the dealbreaker.)
Click to expand...

I find that very ironic, since Apple promoted the PowerPC chip for years as being 'much faster and powerfull' than the x86 architecture. And now they'll use it too.
 
Loki said:
There is a reason a console has that price point... it is meant for running games. The CPU's are specifically designed with game design in mind.. so the pipeline's, the amount of chip registers, the available cache(if any) etc.. are all tailored to game development.
Click to expand...

Not sure of technically whats happening within the XBOX but I do know some firends with moded Xbox's with windows CE in them that run windows better than some 1.7 ghz PCs.

So even if is a granny apple compared to a golden delicious its still a computer.

I don't mind spending another $200.00 on each machine to mod it to render because I will not be playing games on this farm.

These units will allow me to render 2 1/2 hour HD weddings with some sweet film post effects at max resolution while I work on the next wedding on my real computer.
 
sonisfear said:
Here is a dumb idea...if NLE programmers could do it I would pay big bucks for it.

Microsoft and Sony are soon to release ridiculously powerful gaming machines in the $400.00 range that you could not buy even if you wanted too for thousands of dollars.

Xbox 360 I think has 3 x 3.2 ghz cpu on a dualtreaded motherboard wrap in a delicious tiny white case... This unit practically runs windows already (we'll See when I get mine). As well as is WMVHD ready

PS3 has some sort of quad cell technology ...and is Blu Ray (not an expert on this just a rough idea)

Both have nasty insane rendering power for pennies in ratio.
Why not write a NLE render farm agent program for these one or both of these units?

I would run out and buy 4 in one shot. imagine the rendering farm power for $1,600.00 bucks.
Click to expand...

I'm into that kinna crap and trust me the AMD Dual Core Athlon 64 at 4.2GHz (without the "+" they put at the end of their other CPUs) is probably faster than all 3 intel CPUs put together :thumbsup:
 
Eurotrash said:
I find that very ironic, since Apple promoted the PowerPC chip for years as being 'much faster and powerfull' than the x86 architecture. And now they'll use it too.
Click to expand...

There was a time when it was true - but architecture had alot more to do with it than raw Mhz.

The biggest problem with the G5 is power consumption/heat. It is fine for a big desktop, but doesn't fit the bill for a Powerbook - and Mac users have wished for a Powerbook G5 since 2003. Who wants to burn their lap from the heat and only have a Powerbook that runs on batteries for an hour? Intel already has low power laptop processors, so this was probably the biggest deciding factor.

BTW, has anyone been tracking what's coming out of the Apple Media Event right now?

- iMac: faster, larger disk, built in iSight. Includes FrontRow (app)
- iPod: 30GB/60GB with Video - realtime decoding of MPEG4 and H.264. 260,000 colors. Video out.
- FrontRow and PhotoBooth Apps.
- 30GB iPod: $299 - 31% thinner than current 20GB; - 60GB iPod: $399.
- New iPods avail next week. Comes with case
- iMac: $1299 for 17" model with 1.5GHz, $1799 for 20" model with 2.1GHz
- iTunes 6 to be released
- Front Row - comes with new iMacs. Lets you enjoy video/music/pictures from sofa. Everything still displayed on iMac screen. iPod-like remote. 6 button remote.
- Photobooth - appears to be slide show application.
- Music Videos. 2000 available to buy. $1.99 each.
- Can "gift" music to other people. Peer reviews and recommendation service.
- Videos have Digital Rights Management built in. Can play on up to 5 computers
- You will be able to buy TV shows from iTunes Music Store. $1.99 per episode. ABC on board (Desperate Housewives, Lost)

http://www.macrumors.com/
 
MrG said:
I'm into that kinna crap and trust me the AMD Dual Core Athlon 64 at 4.2GHz (without the "+" they put at the end of their other CPUs) is probably faster than all 3 intel CPUs put together :thumbsup:
Click to expand...


Yes but how much does just the CPU cost without the motherboard,etc...
 
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