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Cmistudios started selling the DVD’s on 16th April.
Very interesting. I lot to take in. the small point that i would add is that the cost of flame, inferno, smoke, fire is not really SGI’s fault. SGI has dropped the price of a Tezro which is half an Octane 2 with more powerful CPUs. I think that 2P version is 20,000. The price of a 4P Onyx 350 has fallen even more compared to the old Onyx 2. they start areound 50,000 compared to $125,000 2 years ago.
My only problem with discreet is that the prices of their software haven’t fallen as much and if i know the price of the worksation or server is half what it used to be and you add 2 or 3 “refinement” features to the software and keep the price the same or slightly lower i feel robbed.
the 68,000 price for an SD version of smoke on linux is even worse because the linux workstation without the software can be bought in the same configuration on IBM’s website for $7,000. Flint at 99,000 on Linux is another mistake. they had to drop the price of Lustre from $130,000 becasue competiors were coming out with linux products running on the same hardware for $70,000.
Discreet loved SGI hardware in the past becasue it kept prices high to get the best quality and migrating to Linux and Intel hardware will eventually lower prices because all things being equal most people won’t pay an extra 40,000 for discreet software no matter how great it is because there are a lot of companies out there with new ideas that are good. I don’t think that discreet will ever totally migrate to “off the shelf” hardware for that reason.
You have to remember the discreet and SGI work very closely together and both companies from a financial point of view would like to keep higher margin business. The way you do that is not starting a battle on CPU speed but picking battles that SGI can win, like even faster throughput and better graphics cards. I wouldn’t be surprised to see and updated Xbow soon with ability to do 2K film in real time on aTezro level workstation or many 2K streams in realtime on an Onyx. V12 will be upgraded as well to put it ahead of new Nvidia and ATI cards. then discreet can justify the cost and they will still have an argument they can win.
>>My only problem with discreet is that the prices of their software haven’t fallen as much and if i know the price of the worksation or server is half what it used to be and you add 2 or 3 “refinement” features to the software and keep the price the same or slightly lower i feel robbed.
You make a good point. If the price of the *workstations* keep falling but the prices of Discreet *systems* keep steady, I guess the price of FFI *software* is rising?
–Xavier
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