Last week AMD held a press event describing their involvement in the world of digital animations. In the course of the presentation, AMD counted on the support of the prestigious American animation studio DreamWorks Animation SKG, the company responsible for animated films such as Shrek, Shrek 2, Madagascar, and Over the Hedge, and HP, the official server supplier for DreamWorks as of 2004. In the course of the event, AMD told us exactly how they are impacting the digital animation creation process and how their strategic alliance with DreamWorks is progressing.

The partnership between AMD and Dreamworks is one of mutual benefit. The importance of the partnership was emphasized repeatedly at the event by two prestigious figures from both companies: Hans Ku, the Senior Project Engineer of DreamWorks animation and Vincenzo Pistillo, AMD’s Regional Marketing Director for Southern Europe.

If the presentation was only meant to praise the partnership between the two companies, we would not have written this article. However, fortunately for us, that was not the case. Much of the information that was presented in the presentation we thought would be interesting to you, our readers, and in our opinion would also give a large amount of insight on the creation of digital animations. In addition, we thought we could use the information to describe the process companies undertake when choosing CPU manufacturers.

The press event was held at the Museum Del Cinema Gianni Comenci, translated to English as The National Museum of the Cinema. As can be expected, much of the museum is focused on Italian film history and has numerous events held in it yearly. The Museum is only open to the public three days a week.

We were given a little behind the scene tour of how the movie Over the Hedge was produced. Since a very large amount of 3D production is involved, production is naturally dependant on a computer. Because of this, it might be thought that the PC has replaced the traditional and rather humble original method of using a pen and paper, however, this is not the case. The appearance of the finished 3D product is still initially in the hands of artists who are armed with paper and pencils.

Personality of the 3D animation is dependant on the voice of the person who is acting the character. Because of this, while the 3D animation is still in its early stages of production, the voices of the actors have already been recorded. Using the actor’s voice and tone as a reference, designers create the character’s facial expressions in coordination with them.

Designers begin by creating a Rough Stand-in model and Animation Proxy model. These are usually made with a small amount of polygons in order to allow for more detail to be added later.

After the Rough Stand-in and Animation Proxy have been designed, the programmers add more detail and color to the model and proceed to render more fluid and coherent movements.

Once fixed, all of the above models are used to create the final High Resolution Render which is to be used in the finished product. But this is just one object in an enormous scene where there can be a much larger amount of present objects, all of which require the same detail to design. All of this is done in order to satisfy a more demanding public. So what part does AMD play in all of this? That is what we aim to tell you next.

To say the least, some of the figures presented by DreamWorks are impressive: two years of pre-production, a year and a half of production, 120,000 frames for a film that lasts roughly an hour, 30Tbytes of storage, and 15 million CPU hours. All of this deals with computers.

AMD and DreamWorks originally announced a three-year strategic alliance together back at NAB on April 18, 2005. This alliance made AMD the preferred processor provider for DreamWorks Animation, after which most servers/workstations would utilize an AMD Opteron processor with DirectConnect Architecture.

So why choose AMD? We all know performance is a major aspect at which companies look at, but what other factors played a role in DreamWorks creating an alliance with AMD? Among the main factors that played a role in DreamWorks’s decision to use AMD Opteron based servers, energy consumption, platform life, and cooling needs played key roles.

In recent years, AMD and Intel have begun to greatly focus on improving the energy efficiency of their products. Energy efficiency is a matter of remarkable importance for CPU manufacturers. A number of reasons make it a key factor for the success of a product.

Although in home environments the power consumption of a PC might at times be negligible, it cannot be overlooked in a work environment where there can be hundreds of PCs running at the same time. Costs because of power inefficiency can easily become a problem for large companies that use thousands of PCs at the same time, especially companies that have server systems. Therefore, it is natural for companies to want components in their PCs that are power efficient, and where better to start than the CPU?

As Intel demonstrated at IDF, a 9 Megawatt Datacenter could amount to costs of $14.6 Million a year. The thing to remember when considering the costs of running a PC is that it all adds up. For companies with a large amount of PCs, electrical costs could easily shoot upwards if each system’s CPU is inefficient in its power use. For this reason, in order to please a more corporate crowd, although it also helps people who are trying to keep their electric bill low, Intel and AMD have made more strides in the direction of power efficiency by placing a large amount of effort into decreasing power consumption.

Platform life is also a key factor that companies must look at when purchasing a CPU. DreamWorks initially moved to AMD based PCs two years ago. At this time, AMD was introducing Dual Core CPUs that didn’t vary in TDP (Thermal Power Design). This allowed companies to use the same cooling system for newer Opteron processors that they were using with older ones meaning that they wouldn’t have to buy a new cooling system or PSU for each CPU. It is important to not underestimate the advantages upgrade flexibility can offer DreamWorks. It really helps cut costs when companies don’t need to purchase brand new motherboards or new cooling systems each time they upgrade CPUs.

Cooling also makes a huge difference in server costs. Naturally, it is closely tied to energy efficiency and electric costs. Intel’s abandonment of the Netburst architecture is an example of the importance thermal output will make in CPU manufacturer’s decisions regarding products. The enormous costs companies had to pay in Electric bills cooling Netburst-based CPUs unnecessarily drove up cooling costs for companies. The Netburst architecture was too demanding in terms of cooling to properly compete with other products, and so it was dropped. Instead of focusing on increasing the clock frequency with their next-generation architecture, something which Intel had done previously when creating the Netburst architecture, they instead began focusing on decreasing thermal output.

Conclusion

Our aim in this article was not really to just give an overview of how AMD is involved with DreamWorks, but more of to give an idea of the factors large companies keep in mind when considering a CPU, or more of a server, for use. Some analysts are claiming that at some point in time power costs for running servers will ultimately overtake the hardware costs. This statement only makes it more essential for companies to focus on reducing power consumption and thermal output of their products.

From what we are seeing, AMD is on a steady track to gaining more marketshare in the server market. As of July 2006, according to Mercury Research, Opterons accounted for 22.1 percent of all x86 server processors shipped in the market. This was a 250 percent gain when compared to the market share from the previous year’s first quarter.