Part Two of Three Parts.
In the second clip, Ted takes us inside MobileViz, also known as The Devil’s Playground, their big rolling render rig. There’s a brief appearance by SilverDraft CEO Amy Gile. About two and a half minutes in, Ted mentions a certain supercomputer built by SilverDraft co-founder Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan back in 2003. He’s referring to “Big Mac,” about which there are many articles still available online, including this one: “Virginia Tech’s Power Mac G5-based ‘X’ Supercomputer is officially number 3 in the world” from SpaceRef.
This 53-ft. van wasn’t just parked at the outdoor exhibits for show. It was actually working on a couple of paying jobs, running renders all week during the show while booth visitors took the tour. It’s about 1,750 cores harnessed together as one large supercomputer that can travel anywhere there’s asphalt. Ted points out that this thing can be configured to operate as one enormously huge processor, or as a series of separately configured multiple processors in order to run several jobs at once, as was happening here.
Above: Ted guides us through the heart of SilverDraft’s ginormous mobile rendering rig.
Above: also known previously as Mobileviz VFX, this massive 53 ft. SilverDraft rig now houses “The Devil’s Playground” mobile super-computer. It’s a giant rolling render farm.
On the next page: Virtual fun with a cute little SilverDraft Demon.
