'Puss in Boots' comes alive on HP technology

BANGALORE, INDIA: DreamWorks Animation SKG used Hewlett Packard technology to produce its new movie 'Puss in Boots', which will hit the theaters soon.

As part of a technology relationship that began with HP in 2001, DreamWorks had made use of HP Converged Infrastructure as the technology backbone for its animation.

DreamWorks Animation availed HP's desktop workstations, networking products and also digital rendering resources accessed via the cloud.

HP technology had been a part of many DreamWorks films, including 'Shrek' series, 'How to Train Your Dragon', 'Kung Fu Panda', 'Kung Fu Panda 2'. Over 200 HP Z800 Workstations ProLiant BL460 blade technology were used for the film.

The latter, geographically dispersed in five server render farms across the United States and India, provided peak compute power and powered 117 terabytes of data and more than 60 million render hours.

“As with all of our films, ‘Puss In Boots’ required powerful systems to support the digital demands of our creative teams,” said Ed Leonard, chief technology officer, DreamWorks Animation SKG. “Knowing that we have the support of our partners at HP allows us to free our artists from technical limitations, letting them focus on creating the most powerful 3-D CG experiences.”

DreamWorks chose HP Networking solutions including HP 12508 and 5800 series switches, HP Networking Intelligent Management Center, and HP Intelligent Resilient Framework.

Moreover, DreamWorks used HP X9000 Ibrix network storage system as a solution and also deployed HP Cloud Services.

Eight million of the total 63 million hours of rendering were rendered using HP Cloud Services, which represented 45 per cent of the studio’s overall cloud computing needs.

“Our decade-long collaboration with DreamWorks has challenged HP to develop technology that continually meets the intense, high-performance needs of the world’s best digital animators,” said Santanu Ghose, country head, Converged Infrastructure Solutions, HP India. “HP effectively serves as an infrastructure extension of a premiere Hollywood animation studio providing cutting-edge technology to support some of the most creative minds in film and animation.”