The "I have more buckets than you" Challenge

[Ernest Burden III]

you could have upgraded for quite some time...

 

Yeah, but these BOXX machines are expensive and for the scene work and post work the workstation still does wonderfully. My older Quadro card beats that friend's newer ATI, to the point that the same C4D file on his machine always goes to box mode when doing camera animation work, but stays in a usable mode on mine. But for rendering out animation frames we use a few of the 12core Macs. That's how I've gotten extra life out of this machine. I will have to buy a new one pretty soon, though, just to keep up with the rest of you lot.

 

...stupid macs or not...

I hope it was obvious I was kidding about that.

[ludnid]

Let's see... Between my workstation and my two dedicated render nodes, I have 36 physical cores, 72 hyperthreaded. When I saw the title of this thread, I thought I had a decent chance to at least be in the running. Then I read the first post with Jeff's friend running 312 cores, and I realized I needed to step it up a notch.

 

I asked our CADD manager roughly how many workstations had Max deployed as part of our CADD package and she said "all of them". I use mental ray, so with DBR I am limited to 4 external render nodes. The workaround is to use a combination of Backburner with DBR. So in theory, I could divide all of our office's workstations into groups of 5 (one Backburner server with 4 associated DBR nodes) and use Backburner with split scan lines turned on to get all those workstations cranking on one image. But how many cores would that be?

 

At the firm where I work, I see 87 workstations on my floor, not including the handful of laptops that the managers use. There are two other floors with a roughly equal density of workstations, plus probably another 40 on the first floor. Let's call it 300 total workstations. Most of them are Dell Optiplex 980, 990, or 9010s configured with quad core i5 processors. 300 workstations, 4 cores per workstation, that's 1200 cores. Just so my workstation and render nodes don't feel left out, let's call it 1272 cores. I got a little giddy typing that.

 

So, 1272 cores.

 

With Backburner and mental ray DBR, that'd be 60 split scan line strips with an average of 20 cores per strip.

 

But why stop there?

 

What if I tapped the workstations in our satellite offices? Based on the number of employees we have, I estimate that we have another 150 workstations capable of running Max. That's another 600 cores. Of course, the network overhead to this entire operation would be obscene, not to mention the time required to set up the Backburner / DBR groups of 5 and the extra power draw of running 450 workstations at 100% (I'm picturing the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where the guy at the power plant has to kick in the auxiliary power switch when Clark plugs in all of his Christmas lights). And all this rendering would have to be done at night or on the weekends when nobody else is using their workstations.

 

So theoretically, I could harness 1872 cores. Would it be practical? No way. But it's is pretty neat to think about.

 

Standing on my table screaming along with my modest i7 980x..... "SCOTT SCOTT SCOTT!!!" ..... hahaha...i'll be watching this one

[Scott Dombrowski]

Yeah, I think this experiment will stay theoretical for a while. If I ever have the need to render out an image the size of Texas and if there's time built into the schedule for me to set all of that up (ha ha ha), I'll try it out. I have had a couple of occasions where I had to render out 15 or so 6000px images. In those cases I did utilize the Backburner / DBR method and commandeered most of the workstations on my floor in order to get them rendered out overnight. I'm lucky to have a supportive IT group that allows me to do what I need to in order to get the job done.

[Tommy L]

Scott, Im not sure that theoretical cores are allowed so I think 312 is still the score to beat.

[Jeff Mottle]

Scott, Im not sure that theoretical cores are allowed so I think 312 is still the score to beat.

 

If there is a bucket rendering, it's allowed We can have a most buckets in the fastest time competition next time

 

Scott, we're all waiting for you to show us 1872 bucket, but I have a feeling, having worked in an architectural firm where I've been able to commandeer CAD stations, by the time some of those fire up, the other buckets will have finished the image. You better render a 10K image

[Dimitris Tolios]

Screen-shots with buckets or no puding !

[Scott Dombrowski]

Screen-shots with buckets or no puding !

We're all Photoshop experts here. I could give you an image that looks like a screen shot with 1872 buckets if that would help. It'd be up to you to count all the buckets to make sure I didn't miss any, though.

 

I'm not even sure I could get a screenshot showing all the buckets. Since it would be done with Backburner and split scan lines, no one screen would show all the buckets rendering at once... there'd be the Backburner manager listing all the render slaves assigned to the job, and each render slave with its associated 4 DBR nodes would only show the ridiculously skinny strip that it was working on. The only way I can think of to show all the buckets at once on one screen would be to VNC into every single Backburner render slave. That'd be 90 VNC sessions going at once and all tiled across one desktop. I'd need two of these just to see them all:

 

 

In fact, I think I need two of those anyways. Time to go fill out a purchase req. I'll run the experiment just as soon as my boss approves the screens.

[Ernest Burden III]

I could give you an image that looks like a screen shot with 1872 buckets if that would help.

 

It would be cone-of-shame time for you, my friend. Me, I got my eight buckets on my one machine. Your buckets may very.

 

 

Edited May 22, 2013 by Ernest Burden

[Dimitris Tolios]

Pff...guess you've miss-understood the scope of my post

And probably the OPs too...I thought Jeff was after "real life working" setups, not "lets network the whole building to see what's possible setups". And he asked for screenshots - eyecandy

Then again, it might be just me - (darn, i hate the cone of shame!)

[Nic H]

just worked out our total

 

its 378 cores - now getting them all working on one image (to get that all important screenshot) at once is another thing....:lol:

 

split between i7 6 core workstations, dual 8 core xeons, and a handful of older 4 core turdboxes

[Nic H]

if only we could link these together into a shared cga network....

[Tommy L]

if only we could link these together into a shared cga network....

Nah. Ernest would just slow us all down.

[Ernest Burden III]

Nah. Ernest would just slow us all down.

 

Hey. Every bucket is sacred.

[Nic H]

all buckets are created equally

buckets work in teams

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

all buckets are created equally

buckets work in teams

 

All buckets are created equal but some buckets are more equal than others.

[Nic H]

actually youre right - i retract that statement.

i do not want dirty 'mac' buckets on my renderings

[Guest dialog]

Can someone explain to me and our I.T department how to get more buckets going. I am on 8 lonely buckets... yes 8.

[frog_a_lot]

Can someone explain to me and our I.T department how to get more buckets going. I am on 8 lonely buckets... yes 8.

 

It depends on how many cores and threads your CPU has, so an i7 930 for instance has 4 cores and 8 threads, so you get 8 buckets. If I want more buckets I either need a CPU with more cores, or to set up distributed rendering. So if I connect another i7 930 and use distributed rendering, i get 16 buckets, another would get me 24 etc etc.

 

So if you want more.. get a better CPU or some render slaves.

[Guest dialog]

We seem to have a problem with our distributed rendering. When we try and add another machine it never works. I and neither of the I.T departments can figure it out

[Tommy L]

We seem to have a problem with our distributed rendering. When we try and add another machine it never works. I and neither of the I.T departments can figure it out

 

Maybe your buckets has a holes in it.

[Guest dialog]

Maybe your buckets has a holes in it.

 

Haha...

[Ernest Burden III]

I looked at the Boxx site, thinking maybe I should get me some more buckets. A quick look at the newest generation of the sort of workstation I use started at $16,000 Wow. Dual eight-core, but damn that's a lot.

[Guest dialog]

I looked at the Boxx site, thinking maybe I should get me some more buckets. A quick look at the newest generation of the sort of workstation I use started at $16,000 Wow. Dual eight-core, but damn that's a lot.

 

What workstation do you use now? What is your workflow for large production renders?

[Ernest Burden III]

I use their 3DBOXX models. I was just surprised. But they always have Quadro cards and ECC memory, so they tend to be expensive. I know there are cheaper ways to get buckets.

[Tommy L]

I use their 3DBOXX models. I was just surprised. But they always have Quadro cards and ECC memory, so they tend to be expensive. I know there are cheaper ways to get buckets.

 

Thats nearly twice what I spent on my current 78 bucket setup.

In fact, frankly, I dont know where Boxx get their numbers from. $16k is just silly. My (used) MDX cost that.

Edited May 29, 2013 by Tommy L