Glendale, Calif. – In a press event at DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. this week, executives from Hewlett-Packard Co.and Intel Corp. outlined how the latest innovations in multicore processing, combined with a new workstation, will trigger a re-architecting of computing workflows.
HP refreshed its Z-series workstation line-up this week with the latest Intel Westmere multicore technology and Jim Zafarana, vice-president and general manager of the global workstations unit for HP, said the vendor believes the multiplier effects of multicore processing will be transformational, letting users do in minutes, what once took hours.
The opportunity for channel partners will be to help their customers understand how multicore processing can transform their workflows, how to leverage the new performance with the right software, and how to adapt business processes to the new capabilities.
“The winners are going to re-architect themselves to take advantage of this new architecture,” said Zafarana. “The winners will re-architect for multicore first and those that lag will lose.”
Intel’s new six-core, 32nm Xeon 5600 series processors are now available on HP’s Z800, Z600 and Z400 workstations and Thor Sewell, director, workstation business strategy, data centre group with Intel, said it’s a lot of performance available at the fingerprints of the workstation user.
Before the economic downturn, the workstation market was experiencing strong annual growth of 20 per cent, year over year, and Sewell said analyst firm IDC Corp. sees the workstation install base as primed for refresh in 2010. Key drivers will include the move from 2D to 3D design, from analog to digital, from CAD design to intelligent design, from overnight processing to real-time, and from 32-bit to 64-bit processing.
“We’ve seen nearly a 2X performance gain in key application benchmarks (with Westmere),” said Sewell. “It’s about improving the entire workstation experience.”Software vendors are re-architecting their applications to leverage the new infrastructure.
Mike Kanfer, senior business development manager with Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE), said when Creative Suite 5 (CS5) launches on April 12th it will be optimized to leverage the power of multicore.
“We have completely re-architected our programs to work for 64 bit,” said Kanfer. “In Premiere Pro we rebuilt the playback engine from scratch. We’re using all the cores on the processors. No special hardware needed beyond the workstation, a nice amount of RAM and a good video card.”
DreamWorks Animation, producers of animated motion pictures such as Shrek, Monsters vs. Aliens and its latest, How to Train a Dragon, is a major user of Intel-powered HP workstations. The company is in the midst of a three-year technology overhaul to allow it to fully leverage the power of multicore, and meet its goal of producing three major animated features every year.
“The next really transformational change effect all of us in business will see is scalable multicore processing,” said DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. “And never in my life did I think I’d be standing in front of a room saying that.”
Multicore processing will allow DreamWorks to take a process that once had to touch as many as 18 people down to as little as four, allowing the company’s creative professionals to see in real-time different creative possibilities.
“It’s putting the level of computing power into the hands of people that will change every facet of their work process, and therefore their work product,” said Katzenberg. “It will allow them to be much more creative in what they’re doing, and interactive in how they work.”
DreamWorks CTO Ed Leonard said the studio has set the goal of doing three movies every year. Each of them is a five-year, $150 million bet, and they’ll rely on their technology transformation to make it happen.
“It’s probably the single biggest bet the company has ever made on technology, and we’ve made some big bets,” said Leonard. “Cost effective, total cost of ownership, quality, those are just a given, we expect that of out technology provider. What matters to us is that the technology enables things on screen that couldn’t otherwise be done. It’s about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”
