HP blade servers power visual entertainment

BANGALORE, INDIA: Hewlett Packard (HP) today announced that India's leading visual effects company Paprikaas has selected HP blade server technology to increase its production of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and drive cost-saving data center initiatives.

CGI is used as visual effects in films, television programs and video games. With CGI, development of a typical 90-minute film often requires the production and storage of more than two million hours of digitally created content.

“These extreme performance and storage requirements, coupled with rising demand for visual effects, have put competitive pressure on companies to increase  production. With high-performance computing blade solutions from HP, visual effects companies are now able to produce larger volumes of digital content much faster and more cost-effectively,” said Rajesh Dhar, Director, Industry Standard Servers (ISS), HP India sales.

Cost and space savings with HP blade servers
Paprikaas chose HP ProLiant BL460c G5 servers to increase performance and establish an energy-efficiency standard in its data center. With its low-power module and the latest low-watt quad-core processor from Intel, the HP ProLiant BL460c is optimized for power-constrained environments. 

“The production demands of our business were pushing the power and space limits of our current data center, so we faced a significant challenge – either build out another data center or find an energy-efficient server alternative,” said Nandish Domlur, CEO, Paprikaas at a press conference. “With the HP Proliant BL460c, we’ve increased our available compute capacity significantly without increasing our total power draw a single watt. We also have the compute power required to create the next blockbuster animation.”

Powered by 240 ProLiant BL460c servers, Paprikaas’ production system was placed on the recent TOP500 List of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Its system delivers 23 teraflops per second of performance, which enables Paprikaas to significantly increase CGI production and gain a competitive advantage.

“HP provides us performance and reliability. With HP blade servers we have been able to bring down our operational costs by 25 to 30 percent. We will continue to work closely with HP to create certain benchmarks,” Domlur said.

"HP is delighted to be selected by Paprikaas for its data center requirements. HP Blade Servers provide path-breaking solutions that translate into savings in the form of space and energy, thereby reducing the total cost of operation (TCO), making them the ideal choice for fast growing businesses such as Paprikaas. In addition to cost savings, HP Blades help effectively reduce the carbon footprint and minimize environmental impact," said Dha.

HP blade servers offer visual effects companies a way to pack the increased compute power and capacity needed for producing high-resolution digital imagery into a smaller space. Additionally, the many energy-saving features of the HP BladeSystem and HP ProLiant server technologies can deliver bottom-line savings to the business. “HP has associated with other digital content creators (DCC) in India by selling servers and blade servers. But, Paprikaas is the first company in India to which we provide end-to-end data center services: thermal diagnostic and data center transformation services,” he added.