Discreet announces Flint on Linux / Intel

[Xavier]

Check out the press release:

http://www4.discreet.com/company/press.php?id=591

Well it was predictable… after Smoke / Linux and Burn, discreet announced today Flint on Linux running on IBM hardware with Intel CPUs.

I’m a bit dissapointed that they decided to only port Flint (aka crippled Flame) because I *really* like the Modular Keyer and would have a hard time working without it…

I’m sure in time more products will migrate…

By the way, who said Linux PCs are cheap? The “NAB Special Price” for a turnkey system is around 100K$!

I’m really eager to see benchmarks comparing Flinux with Flame on Tezro!

— Xavier

[Anonymous]

yes, since there’s no o2 like machine any more it was foreseeable that they’ll choose a new
lower budget version. this is the primary reason flint exists.

but $100,000 is not what i call low budget 😉

they should have taken the smoke linux price or around…

[sinancg]

I wonder if the Linux system will support multiple CPUs, not that I can buy one personally. 🙂

Also they are bundling smoke and flint on the same node for an additional $20K.

Sinan Vural

[eltopo]

I guess the question now is, when are the Flame and Smoke HD versions going to be offered on Linux. I would not be surprised if they appeared on an Altix near you.

However at that kind of price, I don’t see the point of using Linux, specially when at 100K you can buy any other system (e.g. G5+Shake+FCP HD+San+RAID+Maya) and have enough spare money to buy an Audi…

[Xavier]

Eltopo,

>>I guess the question now is, when are the Flame and Smoke HD versions going to be offered on Linux.

When discreet solves HD I/O issues and when enough customers request it. “Big iron” customers are still skeptical (ahem… like Foetz!) about using “commodity” hardware for client sessions. I guess this version of Flinux can be considered a “proof-of-concept” for current discreet customers.

>>I would not be surprised if they appeared on an Altix near you.

I would be *extremely* surprised if FFI was ever ported to Altix because it lacks graphics hardware. If you can cluster a bunch of Itanium PCs together in a render farm, why bother with an Altix anyways? Onyx-type hardware is much more adequate for interactive compositing work than Altix clusters.

Why do you think it would be a good idea to port FFI to Altix anyways?

>>However at that kind of price, I don’t see the point of using Linux, specially when at 100K you can buy any other system (e.g. G5+Shake+FCP HD+San+RAID+Maya) and have enough spare money to buy an Audi…

Alright, alright, we get the point already… Shake is cheaper than FFI… Geez! 🙄

Do you have anything else to say in favour of Shake? It must have other qualities!

The point of using Linux/Intel is a way for discreet to have non-SGI alternatives in the mid-range. As I said earlier, I am really eager to see benchmarks. Either way, I think we’ll have some surprises.

Anyways, I think the reason the price is so high is because they don’t want to upset their existing customers too much.

Now the message Discreet is sending their customers is: “Look guys, we’ve got this thing running on non-SGI hardware, so you don’t have to worry. If SGI drops graphics workstations, or PCs become faster than SGI or the market demands that we switch to Intel, we’re ready.”

Meanwhile, while people are still willing to pay big bucks for FFI, prices won’t drop too much I guess. Offer and demand…

As I said elsewhere, I’d rather be discreet and have to drop prices (eventually, I guess) on a great product than be some other company that has a cheap product that generates no interest whatsoever… 🙂

Bye,

— Xavier

[Deke]

Softimage DS costs 90k-200k and it runs on windows. I don’t get why everyone thought that simply because they moved to intel hardware that it was going to be that much cheaper. An O2 wasn’t exactly expensive. Those IBM boxes they use costs the same as an O2. Also when you come out with a product for a new operating system you have to make back your porting costs. If there is going to be a price drop it probably won’t be for another couple years.

-Deke

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