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Interesting thread on the San forum about the new Mac Pro
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[Craig Seeman] “There certainly wasn’t much of a motive to use Firewire when Mac include GigE.”
There was when Macs had FW400 and 100Mbit Ethernet.
[Craig Seeman] “For the larger facility that might be correct. I have a hunch some will see IP TB as a lower budget ease of use method to cluster for rendering in some very small shops.”
Why do you keep talking about this in terms of network render?
The physical networking is not the hard part of building a render farm. It’s not even usually the bottleneck — though the render nodes all banging on the same shared storage can be.
The client/server system for distributing assets needed for the render, assigning jobs to nodes, monitoring nodes’ statuses, tolerating faults, and re-assembling the split output is the hard part of networked rendering.
I don’t see signs that Apple is interested in this area. They discontinued XGrid, and when was the last major update to Qmaster?
Networking over Thunderbolt is far more interesting for simple shared NAS storage, which you can do today with AFP, than it is for networked rendering which you can do with Shake (EOLed 4 years ago) or Compressor (with its crummy encoders).
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “I don’t see signs that Apple is interested in this area. They discontinued XGrid, and when was the last major update to Qmaster?”
I’ve heard so many horror stories about Qmaster.. how can Apple be so inept on this front? I know shops with literally dozens of iMacs & Pros who still sit on one machine for overnight renders.. I’m talking 40+ cores + gpus sat there doing nothing because Apple can’t get their OWN machines running their OWN software to work properly??
Unless I’m missing something either reliable network rendering is impossible (yet I hear Episode are OK?) or Apple seriously JDGAF..
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[Walter Soyka] “There was when Macs had FW400 and 100Mbit Ethernet.”
I’m not sure how long that period was given the PowerMac G4 introduced in 2000 had GigE.
[Walter Soyka] “or Compressor (with its crummy encoders).”
Which is either going to have a major overhaul or otherwise go away entirely in the near future. In either case, Apple may revisit networking. If they do it’ll likely be geared towards ease of use (unlike QMaster) rather that deep user flexibility.
[Walter Soyka] “They discontinued XGrid, and when was the last major update to Qmaster?”
In Apple’s case past doesn’t always indicate future in that they drop things that don’t meet their business model or user experience goals and then reintroduce as “new” when the technology gets to the point that they can do what they want to do with it.
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Episode, Pf Farmer, Rhozet (PC) plus lots of other network render tools are working just fine. Qmaster is a total mess. Funny thing it, it actually works better with distributed AE renders than with Compressor (which is equally flawed as Qmaster).
All other tools make a lot more sense in terms of stability and a lot less prone to bringing your entire network down (Qmaster running on a network makes it virtually unusable for anything else) plus their are cross platform; building a render farm out of Macs isn’t very economical.——
“You also agree that you will not use these products for… the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”
iTunes End User Licence Agreement -
[Dan Stewart] “Unless I’m missing something either reliable network rendering is impossible (yet I hear Episode are OK?)”
Episode clustering is dead simple and especially so compared to QMaster. Either Apple will make it similarly simple or third parties (like Episode) will be able to do this over Thunderbolt.
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[Frank Gothmann] “building a render farm out of Macs isn’t very economical.”
It is if you own several of them. There’s no reason to let unused cores sit idle.
[Frank Gothmann] “Qmaster is a total mess.”
Yes and Compressor itself is not a very good encoder tool. Compressor will either go away or be completely re-written and I suspect one or the other will happen around the time Mavericks comes out or shortly thereafter.
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[Craig Seeman] “Episode clustering is dead simple and especially so compared to QMaster. Either Apple will make it similarly simple or third parties (like Episode) will be able to do this over Thunderbolt.”
Or, you know, Ethernet, which people could be using to do this today with their existing Macs. In a small cluster of 2 or 3 Macs, gigabit Ethernet would be fast enough for clustered encoding — yet how many people with multiple Macs are doing this?
I am not saying that IP over Thunderbolt is useless, but I don’t see how you leap from “Mavericks will support IP over Thunderbolt” to “Apple is interested in clustering again.”
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “yet how many people with multiple Macs are doing this?”
Some Episode users I know but that’s expensive as each participatory (rather than submission) machine requires a license. That’s a cost barrier though, certainly not a complexity of use barrier. Episode’s clustering is easy enough for a novice to do…. and may be what Apple will do… with Thunderbolt.
[Walter Soyka] “I am not saying that IP over Thunderbolt is useless, but I don’t see how you leap from “Mavericks will support IP over Thunderbolt” to “Apple is interested in clustering again.””
I don’t know that they are. It’s just that I don’t have the doubt you have given Apple’s attempt to appeal to its definition of “Power user.” Given that many Macs now have two thunderbolt ports (or more) new MacPro, both 21″ and 27″ iMacs, 13″ and 15″ rMBP, is just one more consideration for an “ease of use” implementation.
I certainly think it’s possible a third party may take advantage of this. There’s at least the possibility of a 10Gb solution that might be easier than going the Thunderbolt to 10Gb Ethernet solution.
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[Craig Seeman] “I certainly think it’s possible a third party may take advantage of this. There’s at least the possibility of a 10Gb solution that might be easier than going the Thunderbolt to 10Gb Ethernet solution.”
Nevertheless, you’re limited to the no. of TB ports on your serving machine -1 as it also has to connect to storage. There are no TB network switches. So, in case of the new Macpro that’s five potential render slaves (if you have nothing else attached apart from storage, that is).
With five machines, you are unlikely to saturate even 1GB ethernet for render jobs so… why bother? A 1GB ethernet cable is a few dollars.——
“You also agree that you will not use these products for… the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.”
iTunes End User Licence Agreement -
I think trying to setup a network like situation over TB is a dead end. The switch would be very expensive compared to GigE (and probably even 10gbit) switches and not make sense as has been suggested for a few machines.
I do lightwave renders over GigE with 3 8-Core MacPros and I never get the sense that it is even sweating.
It would probably be cheaper to just go with 10gbit ethernet, which already has devices and a strong foothold.
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