tezro VS linux

[sidewalksurfing]

it seems the flint on linux has been getting great reviews, and with the addition of HD IO, it seems like a great solution of commercial work. However, how will the tezro be affected by the new 64 bit abillity? How exactly does that affect my tezro if i can now take advantage of 10gigs of ram instead of 2? improved desktop performance? simply faster interaction in flame with many layers? faster spark processing? will i upgrade to FLINUX only to get smoked by tezro that can now address 64 bits of memory?

any input is appreciated....

[loops]

No. 64 bit is not a terribly big deal on Tezro because you can't fit huge quantities of RAM in the box. BTW, modern PCs can address 64 gigs of RAM using PAE, but again, you can't fit much in the box.

[Xavier]

Being able to address 8GB of RAM is a big deal for HD/Film work.

This will enable Flame to store a lot more intermediate results in memory in Batch, meaning that you can go back farther in your tree before the box has to re-render the output of your nodes.

For video rez work, I think the improvement will be less dramatic, since filling up 2GB with video layers takes a lot of nodes!

-- Xavier

[eltopo]

The thing is that Discreet applications have always been 32bit application, therefore they can only use 2GB of RAM. They use SGI for their Graphics bandwith not for their 64bit advantages...

I am not sure, but I think that the new Shake can use the 8GB RAM of a G5

[sidewalksurfing]

ok, that's very interesting about shake, however i'm more interested in some hard facts about 10gigs of ram in a Tezro. As Xavier says, it will definetly speed operations or at least contextual views in large Hi Rez batch setups, but is that all the extra $150K is getting me? Also, i'm sure it's technically feasible to address 64 bits of ram in a PC, but is FLINUX optimized to do that? i read in another posting that FLINUX was a default porting (whatever that means) and hasn't really been tweaked / optimized to squeeze all of the performance out of that Linux box.

any clarifications minus the usual shake/ apple rant is appreciated.

[loops]

Actually you can fit 16 gig in both a Tezro and an IBM-thing. Both OSes can use all of that. At the mo' I should think that FFI only use up to 4 gig ish. Which to be fair is shitloads, guys... going 64 bit (or using PAE on Linux) would let you use more but also has a slight speed hit. Several percent for PAE, not so much for N64 on IRIX. I would think that work that would need more than four gig would be going to at least a Flame anyway, so maybe Flint won't even go 64 bit on SGI?

[eltopo]

The limit for 32 is 2GIGS. Intel managed to add 2GIG's more. However the extra memory doesn't run at it's full speed. App's cannot use the 4gig at the same time, but you can have 2apps using 2gigs each or so on.

About Linux it comes in 32 bit and 64 bit flavors. If you use Xeon, P4 comp, you are running 32 bit Linux (RedHat). If you want 64bit Linux you use Opteron, Itanium and the new x86 from Intel. On these machines you use a different Linux (ususally SuSe's version) and are on these that you can use 16gigs+ of Memory.

However is the application is a 32bit app, it will only use the 2gigs despite the extra meory on the system.

Mac OS X, when run on 64bit processors have both 32bit and 64bit libraries. That means that it can run the web browser and mail app at 32bit 'cause you don't need more and at the same time run something like shake at 64bit

[Xavier]

The thing is that Discreet applications have always been 32bit application, therefore they can only use 2GB of RAM. They use SGI for their Graphics bandwith not for their 64bit advantages...

I am not sure, but I think that the new Shake can use the 8GB RAM of a G5

Right.

My last post was a bit misleading. Current versions of FFI (linux or SGI) are 32 bit apps and cannot address more than 2GB of RAM, regardless of the amount of memory in the machine.

I think the bottom line is this: test drive both systems. I'm sure your discreet rep will be very happy to provide you with both Linux and Tezro systems for your evaluation pleasure. Then you can benchmark both systems and post your results back here... :-)

-- Xavier