ResPower Super/Farm™ Hits 10,000,000 Frames

On November 22, 2005, the ResPower Super/Farm™ renderfarm processed its 10,000,000th frame. Here are some fun facts to go with the occasion:

• The Super/Farm™ processes render jobs ranging in length from single high-resolution stills to feature-length productions.
• Had all 10,000,000 frames been processed for film, the Super/Farm™ would have produced 416,666 seconds of animation, or nearly 115 hours and 45 minutes. At 90 minutes per movie, that's roughly 77 feature-length films.
• Had all of the frames been processed for video, the figure works out to 333,333 seconds of animation, or a little more than 92 hours and 30 minutes. At 22 minutes per episode, that works out to roughly 252 cartoon episodes.
• The Super/Farm™ renders high-resolution stills by breaking up the image into smaller sub-frames, or buckets, which are then rendered discreetly. A typical bucket size is 1000 x 1000 pixels. Had these 10,000,000 frames been for a single square image, each side would measure 3,162,278 pixels, or 2,635 feet, when printed at 100 dpi. That's roughly 1/2 mile, or 0.8 KM per side. That's 6.9 million square feet. Covering that much space with marble tile would cost approximately US$23 million.
• At an average of 1 hour per frame, one computer would take 1,141.5 years to process 10 million frames. The ResPower Super/Farm™ went online roughly 3-1/2 years ago.

Not only would you likely die waiting for those 1,141 years to pass, monumental changes will likely take place as well. Consider:

• 1,141 years ago, in 863 AD, the following happened in Bulgaria:
  • Boris began the conversion to Christianity.
  • This was the same time that brothers Cyril and Metodius, both born in Bulgaria, developed the Cyrillic alphabet, which is now used in Russia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Mongolia, Belarus, Yugoslavia, and, of course, Bulgaria.
  • Note: ResPower has no particular ties to Bulgaria. It just happens that in 863 AD, it was a happening place.
• 863 AD was also the year that...
  • King Louis III of France was born;
  • the Thais seized the town of Tonkin (now Hanoi);
  • Vikings raided the monastery of Cork for the fourth recorded time;
  • The Japanese temple Shujuraigousan Muryojuin Zenrin-ji, commonly referred to as Eikan-do was established;
  • King Donald I of Scotland died; Constantine I ascended to the throne; Halfdan III the Black lost control of the throne, and Norway plunged into civil war;[Note: it is unclear whether Halfdan III died at this time or after the beginning of the civil war]
  • The battle of Poson is fought;
• In the past 1,141 years, the following items were invented:
  • printed books [868 AD, China]
  • candle clocks
  • lense
  • fork
  • plaster
  • golf [935 AD, China]
  • hospital [970 AD, Baghdad]
  • paper-money [1023 AD, China]
  • movable type printing [1045 AD, China]
  • gun
  • eyeglasses
  • windmill
  • sawmill
  • mechanical clock
  • scales for weighing
  • magnetic compass
  • trigger
  • copyright
  • golf balls
  • whiskey [woo hoo!]
  • flush toilets
  • thermometer
  • telescope, microscope
  • submarine
  • adding machine
  • champagne
  • universal joint
  • pressure cooker
  • steam engine
  • lightening rod
  • dictionary
  • sextant
  • spinning jenny
  • steam engine
  • circular saw
  • guillotine
  • cotton gin
  • smallpox vaccination
  • battery
  • locomotive
  • light bulb
  • soda fountain
  • portland cement
  • typewriter
  • refrigerator
  • telegraph
  • dental chair
  • fiber optics [1854!!]
  • elavator
  • dynamite
  • cash register
  • machine gun
  • Coca Cola
  • zipper
  • vacuum cleaner [1899!]
  • zeppelin
  • airplane
  • windshield wipers
  • Cornflakes
  • automobile
  • motion picture
  • talking motion picture
  • stainless steel
  • arc welder
  • 3-D movie
  • loudspeaker
  • television
  • liquid-fueld rockets
  • PEZ
  • analog computer
  • stop-action photography
  • radio telescope
  • magnetic recording
  • canned beer [1935? seriously?]
  • photocopier
  • jet engine
  • helicopter
  • Frisbee
  • credit card
  • videotape recorder
  • hydrogen bomb
  • flight recorder
  • transistor radio
  • solar cell
  • hovercraft
  • FORTRAN
  • MODEM
  • microchip
  • video game
  • microprocessor
  • Gene splicing
  • ethernet
  • laser printer
  • ink-jet printer
  • magnetic resonance imaging
  • supercomputer
  • IBM-PC
  • Macintosh
  • Windows
  • super-conductor
  • synthetic skin
  • digital cellular phone
  • HDTV
  • world wide web
  • digital answering machine
  • pentium processor
  • Java
  • And, of course, the ResPower Super/Farm™ renderfarm

• Scaruffi.com
• Avo-3.com
• nndb.com
• track-of-the-tiger.com
• cork2005.ie
• eikando.or.jp
• firesian.com
• roman-empire.net
• about.com
• krysstal.com
• Google, of course

Founded in 2000, ResPower today houses the largest and fastest third-party computer graphics rendering solution in the world. The ResPower Super/Farm™ supports over 58 configurations of eleven render engines, and is available for unlimited use for the lowest prices in the industry. With more than 3,600 GHz of on-demand rendering power, the Super/Farm turns any computer graphics crew into a major studio. The Super/Farm is available for projects of every size, from one-frame graphics to feature-length movies. ResPower's client list includes Nickelodeon, Technicolor, and Country Music Television. For more information on how to render over the Internet, please log onto http://www.respower.com/.