Supercomputer used for LOTR films

The BBC has a story about the "supercomputer" used to create the special
effects for the LOTR films.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3672887.stm

Here's a sample:

"But most of the data is from the final movie, The Return of the King,
which had more than 1500 special effects shots in it. By contrast the
first movie had only 400 and the second 900."

Just keep in mind that it's the BBC rather than a tech site, so some of
the details are a bit silly. Supercomputers aren't rated by the number
of processors. No. 1, the Japanese Earth Simulator with 5120 processors
leaves in the dust the No. 2 at Los Alamos with 8192 and the current
Mac-based computer that's at No. 3 beat out an machine with almost twice
as many Intel processors. Actual performance is the real measure and
that depends on a number of factors.

That said, a lot of computational horsepower was used in the film.

--Mike Perry
http://www.inklingbooks.com/inklingblog/

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