AFAIK giving artist a PC/MAC/(or any thin client solution) platform at any cost does'nt really matter. The central compute server cost anyways is too high in comparison.
Example of costs: a normal via c3 based PC with disk can be assembled at 10,000-15,000. A normal compute node from a cluster vendor would comes out at 5,00,000 - 25,00,000. And for a motion picture you would require 10-100 of such machines. Cost quotes come from: eSys which is vendor of thin PC. Cluster costs derived from HP, IBM sites (Power4, IA64). Racks cost a seprate Cost effectiveness is not a debateble point in case of LTSP being used for studios. So lets go on to other points then (for and against) diskless solutions Management- Administration and management cost definately is much lower in case of LTSP or any thin client solution. But that also means, one needs to standardize on certain applications, like choosing Gnome as desktop solution, galeon as browser for example sake. Will a artist (graphic artist) allow somebody to control how <underline>his</underline> desktop would look like. If not, then central management point also goes for a six. Renderman protocol does not specify that it could only be used with local application. One can directly call remote render farm from a <underline> cheap and smart </underline> host, and get a good performance since most of the network traffic would only be renderman calls. Which in case of LTSP would also include X protocol and NFS request. So anyway cost benefit which I am not to sure there is, would be offset by the costly network infrastructre needed for accomodating X protocol, NFS and Renderman request. PS: The links you specifed are too preliminary in terms of details regarding Renderman. For detailed specs of Renderman protocol, there are various books on Amazon. For cluster vendors who provide RenderFarms which are compatible to RenderMAn protocol: http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/ Tough there are many others also. I am not doing advertisement for this company Supreet _______________________________________________ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
