Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 14.3
An illustration of the consumption of a render farm's nodal out-
put to create a complete animation sequence faster than would be possible
with a single rendering node.
Grid computers are also used in digital video production, splitting out
groups of frames so that individual systems render only a small portion of
the total video stream, as in Figure 14.3. Grids dedicated to a single task
are often referred to as farms, and can use older equipment for compute
and render farming past the working lifetime as production equipment.
Cluster Computing
When distributing nodes are tightly connected using dedicated high-speed
networking, the result is generally termed a
cluster
. Clustered systems may
provide standard operational support such as transparent load balanc-
ing across multiple public-facing systems or automatic fail-over following
node failure. Many of the top 500 supercomputers are actually clustered
computers, with multiple systems acting in concert while connected with
high-speed dedicated networking equipment. The visualization systems
illustrated earlier in this chapter are examples of visualization clusters, in
which multiple computers divide rendering so that each need only handle
only a small part of the overall display.
