Silverdraft To Create Supercomputing Lab In Hollywood

Silverdraft LLC has announced it is to create a supercomputing lab in Hollywood. Located at the historic Jim Henson Studios, The Silverdraft Center For Content Creation (SC3) will enable freelance artists, and creators of content, such as games, Virtual Reality (VR) and immersive cinema, to post-produce and render their projects using the most highly-optimized technology in the industry.

It will offer a 4K screening theater, as well as multiple creative bays running professional systems for post-production and rendering workflows for 3D animation, VFX, Digital Intermediate (DI) and finishing, as well as VR content creation for platforms such as Oculus Rift.

The SC3 will give content creators experience with state-of-the-art workflow tools typically associated with high-end facilities, while enhancing the quality and production value of their projects and decreasing turnaround times.

It will also serve as a showcase for Silverdraft technologies, where artist feedback will go directly into the pipeline for future product development. Each of SC3's creative bays will contain a combination of Silverdraft Devil & Demon supercomputers and workstations featuring Micron components to power their workflows. Meanwhile, all artists will have access to a shared 4K screening room. The Silverdraft team will collaborate with artists as they create their projects to deepen the understanding of workflow bottlenecks and challenges, and to deliver new solutions.

"As a freelance artist, I'm always pushed to deliver more, but with less time and for less money," said editor and digital artist Brian Fox. "I'm really excited to take my project to the new SC3 lab to see firsthand how supercomputing technology can help me break that cycle. Real-time client attended sessions, with dramatically faster render times, will allow me to finally meet both the creativity and productivity requirements at the same time."

Powered by memory and flash storage developed by Micron, Silverdraft Devil & Demon supercomputers and workstations are application-optimized. This optimized performance speeds up the post-production process by decreasing render times and powering real-time client-attended VFX and DI review sessions.

"Silverdraft's Devil & Demon supercomputers and workstations have built a strong reputation by delivering scalable performance and flexibility that is unmatched by off-the-shelf PCs, but at a lower price," said Ted Schilowitz, President of Silverdraft. "Independent content creators love our products because they need a never-ending supply of faster performance, but their budgets are always very constrained. The SC3 puts our technology to use and creates a blueprint for how supercomputing can change the way we design workflows. Our deeper understanding of the way artists work will help us to develop even better products in the future. We believe the SC3 will inspire and empower many up-and-coming content creators as they help to deliver the next generation of great stories."

"Moving data quickly and reliably is at the core of all complex computing, and it's especially critical in advanced motion graphics rendering," said Steve Pawlowski, VP of advanced computing solutions at Micron. "We're thrilled to see Silverdraft using our technology to build systems and services that will make a dramatic difference in how content is created."

The SC3 is expected to open in autumn 2015.

Image: Demon workstation

www.silverdraft.com

(JP)