During production of Finding Nemo, we started using Linux boxes in addition to SGIs.Why?
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During production of Finding Nemo, we started using Linux boxes in addition to SGIs.
Why?3D painting software we wrote for laying out coral was written in C++ using templates, and the debug info was too large for IRIX, but was debuggable on Linux.
Was this a 32 bit vs. 64 bit issue?
No.
IRIX reserved half the address space for the kernel, while Linux only did a quarter.
So on Linux, we had 3GB, and the symbols fit.
It was a 32 bit show, both machines had 4GB max.
Plenty for Finding Nemo.
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During production of Finding Nemo, we started using Linux boxes in addition to SGIs.
Why?3D painting software we wrote for laying out coral was written in C++ using templates, and the debug info was too large for IRIX, but was debuggable on Linux.
Was this a 32 bit vs. 64 bit issue?
No.
IRIX reserved half the address space for the kernel, while Linux only did a quarter.
So on Linux, we had 3GB, and the symbols fit.
It was a 32 bit show, both machines had 4GB max.
Plenty for Finding Nemo.
How do I know this?
I was the project lead, although the best parts of it were written by my smarter collaborator Michael O’Brien (eventually SVP of R&D at Technicolor).
This story is *not* the 32 to 64 bit transition.
This is just us trying to get another GB of address space, where we leveraged the ongoing Linux port work w/alot of our own.
Now that I think about it, all the impactful work I’ve done in my career happened in 32 bits of address space.
4GB always seemed like a lot to me.
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How do I know this?
I was the project lead, although the best parts of it were written by my smarter collaborator Michael O’Brien (eventually SVP of R&D at Technicolor).
This story is *not* the 32 to 64 bit transition.
This is just us trying to get another GB of address space, where we leveraged the ongoing Linux port work w/alot of our own.
Now that I think about it, all the impactful work I’ve done in my career happened in 32 bits of address space.
4GB always seemed like a lot to me.
@Drwave I’m still amazed at what I managed to achieve with just 32 KB of RAM… and 100 KB floppy discs to store programs and data on.
The first hard drives I remember using at school were huge & held, if my memory serves me, just 5 MB - and that seemed like a lot at the time.
We’ve come a very long way in the space of just a few decades.
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@Drwave I’m still amazed at what I managed to achieve with just 32 KB of RAM… and 100 KB floppy discs to store programs and data on.
The first hard drives I remember using at school were huge & held, if my memory serves me, just 5 MB - and that seemed like a lot at the time.
We’ve come a very long way in the space of just a few decades.
@Bluedonkey totally agree.
But I tell this particular story because I expect folks today look at Finding Nemo (and the Pixar movies that preceded it) and don’t expect those were done on computers with less memory than pretty much every PC you can buy today.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@Bluedonkey totally agree.
But I tell this particular story because I expect folks today look at Finding Nemo (and the Pixar movies that preceded it) and don’t expect those were done on computers with less memory than pretty much every PC you can buy today.
@Drwave @Bluedonkey well if one knows that the Apollo missions werde done with computers much slower than very old calculators one can imagine a lot more. Like banks still using COBOL on mainframes etc. Thanks for the story. what happened to this software? was it only used once?
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@Bluedonkey totally agree.
But I tell this particular story because I expect folks today look at Finding Nemo (and the Pixar movies that preceded it) and don’t expect those were done on computers with less memory than pretty much every PC you can buy today.
@Drwave @Bluedonkey thanks for sharing. That reminds me about how excited I was to learn about how Digital Domain used Linux on DEC Alpha to render scenes for "Titanic" in the late 90s. I actually applied for an sysadmin job, but never heard back from them...
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R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
