CDW StudioCloud Brings Greater Power and Performance to VFX Rendering

Filmmakers utilize what are called “render farms” to do the grunt work of high-resolution video image construction for visual effects. A render farm is a clustered collection of hundreds or thousands of high-performance computer systems that “render” computer-generated imagery (CGI) for movie and television VFX. A final video sequence or “shot” requires the creation of a long series of individual frames and each second of video typically contains 24 frames or more.

“If a studio wants to do a few minutes of footage, that’s a lot of individual frames,” says Joe D’Amato, Principal Solution Architect for CDW StudioCloud Production Services. “You can imagine if you’re going to be watching something on a 60-foot-wide movie screen, it’s a very high-resolution render. The time it can take…to process one single image into something a person can see on the big screen can take up to an hour or two, or in extreme cases, eight to 10 hours per frame.”

VFX rendering requires the use of hundreds or thousands of servers each producing a single frame. Each server processor is multicore, meaning that multiple smaller microprocessors are housed within a larger central processing unit or CPU and each core works on a separate frame.

“There’s no way for an artist to do this on their own machine – they would literally need days or weeks at a time,” D’Amato says. “Instead, we have thousands and thousands of machines, with over 500,000 physical cores, so that artists can send their jobs to those machines and then come back hours later to look at their work.

The actual work of rendering is highly demanding and incredibly intense. It’s easy to run out of computer processing power and it was for that reason that CDW StudioCloud transitioned to new server systems powered by multicore AMD CPUs with much higher core counts.

“We previously used servers, each with up to 36 physical core counts,” D’Amato explains. “The AMD (multicore processor) has 64 physical cores per CPU with two CPUs per computer, thus we have now 128 physical cores per computer.

“As we started to work closely with AMD as partners and examined the options within their technology, we were able to evaluate and select CPUs where the core counts were off the charts. We found a sweet spot with the AMD processors where we could really increase the core counts and generate faster CPU speeds while keeping the power required and heat generated under control. Our clients love the AMD render. We were immediately able to migrate workloads from 3 or 4 racks of (older CPU systems) to a single rack of AMD.”

The move provided a lower server footprint that saved rack space. The shift to AMD CPUs also greatly reduced power consumption and heat concerns through fewer servers needed, improved performance and the greater efficiency of multicore processors. Even though CPUs with more cores run ‘hotter,’ and operate at higher temperatures, far fewer servers are needed to process the same number of frames.

“AMD really won the race on cores, speed, cost, power…it is amazing what AMD did,” D’Amato says. “And Dell was right there with a machine ready to handle it and could address more RAM (random access memory) from Kingston all while delivering better cooling.”

The move to AMD processors also resulted in a greener solution that consumes less power and requires less overall cooling to render the same number of frames. In fact, with the new server technology it’s possible to render more frames with less power, D’Amato says.

“We have a denser offering, which makes it more cost-effective for our clients – we need fewer machines to get the same number of frames out,” he says. “It meant that people are paying less…to use the new AMD offering versus the old offering.”

D’Amato adds that CDW StudioCloud has always been able to provide a better cost advantage over similar services offered by cloud providers who typically price their rendering services based on core-hour footprint or computational time used. CDW charges are based on the number of machines used.

“We ended up with an even greater advantage on price over hyperscalers than we had already with (the previous offering and fewer processor cores),” he says. “How many slam dunks do you need to call it a slam dunk? We had it on price. We had it on cores. We had it on the speed. We now offer the most cost-effective rendering solution in the world. We feel confident saying that. Our machines are effectively the standard for a lot of the studios.”

There can be tremendous variance in workloads rendered by CDW StudioCloud over the course of any given week, month or year, D’Amato says. Studios might run one and two core jobs for shots that are 30 to 60 seconds long on machines that require fewer cores, while other jobs may require the use of an entire machine and all 128 cores over the course of eight hours.

“I can say that hundreds and hundreds of movies are rendered on our farm every year,” he says. “More than a thousand movies a year get rendered at least in part on our farm.”

With more than 500,000 physical cores now deployed and approximately a million virtual hyper-threaded cores, CDW StudioCloud has grown from an operation that only three years ago featured less than 200,000 cores.

“We reduced the number of machines per rack because they ran hotter, but we could get many more cores in a rack,” D’Amato says. He added that switching to AMD CPUs also resulted in the servers performing at faster speeds, with some studios recording up to eight times greater efficiencies per frame created.

The rollout of Dell servers with AMD 64-core processors paired with high-density Kingston memory is ongoing and will eventually entirely replace older CDW StudioCloud servers as these are retired after their useful lifespan.

The upgrade to new AMD multicore processors also means that CDW StudioCloud is pushing the ability to cool these systems to the maximum. Moving to the next level of compute power and cooling will take CDW StudioCloud expansion further afield. CDW StudioCloud is constantly exploring new locations and sustainable, cost-effective access to power and cooling including hydroelectric and geothermal.