In digital media, the most computing-intensive operation is that of rendering. The process of rendering manipulates multiple layers, condensing them in a single frame, and then repeats this process thousands to millions of times, depending on the length of the film or production. Each individual frame can require hundreds of thousands of calculations to improve animation. Traditional storage systems introduce bottlenecks that can limit system throughput and availability, forcing companies to resort to additional purchases, work-arounds and increased system administration to make up for a lack of performance with traditional servers and NAS systems.
BlueArc's unique SiliconServer family has reduced the production time of digital effects and saved production houses money by increasing data access rates to 2D and 3D rendering stations by a factor of two or more, enhancing rendering efficiency while delivering significant cost savings. The SiliconServer is able to maintain these critical data access rates under heavy loads from multiple simultaneous rendering machines - with five to ten times the improvement in throughput over competitive systems on the market today.
"Mill Film's storage infrastructure has been challenged lately by big feature film projects. Using BlueArc's Si7500, we were able to remove storage bottlenecks and deliver the performance needed to dramatically reduce rendering time and meet tight deadlines. Any technology that can increase efficiency and reduce rendering time for Mill Film is a significant leap forward. We have already seen an incredible improvement in efficiency and an excellent return on investment."
-- Cyn Langley, head of engineering, Mill Film
The vast number of frames required for a feature-length film production can overwhelm traditional NAS systems, as individual feature films can consume as much as 3 terabytes of file storage. BlueArc's SiliconServer enables our customers to not only render files more quickly, but to store multiple full-length films behind a single server head, scaling up to a full 256 Terabytes.
BlueArc's solution funnels data through hardware rather than software, enabling customers to fully utilize their gigabit networks. In a rendering environment, BlueArc systems act as a conduit for information, decreasing the latency of information flow between the artists and their data. With the increase in throughput performance BlueArc offers, artists now run an accelerated download from the SiliconServer to their local workstations, virtually eliminating waiting times.
By packing in more iterations in less time, BlueArc customers, including Mill Film, Cinesite and ESC Entertainment, are able to produce a higher-quality product without extending deadlines. High performance storage is key to speeding up the rendering process, and BlueArc's SiliconServer dramatically outperforms NAS appliances based on decades-old traditional architecture.
Meeting delivery dates in the film and digital media industries is critical, and BlueArc's SiliconServer enables customers to decrease the amount of time spent on each project, dramatically decreasing rendering time, and reducing cost. The unequalled performance and scalability of BlueArc's technology far surpasses competitive solutions on the market today.