SYSTEMS
Sun Microsystems Technology Used in Rendering Disney/Pixar's Monsters, Inc.
SANTA CLARA, CA -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) announced today that Disney/Pixar's latest animated feature film Monsters, Inc. was developed using technology from Sun Microsystems. The film's characters and scenes were brought to life in Pixar's powerful Renderfarm of 250 Sun Enterprise(TM) midrange servers. Rendering is the time- and computationally-intensive process in which the correct lighting, textures and shading are applied to 3D computer models to produce sharp, colorful images with photorealistic detail. It is the critical final stage before a film reaches its audience. The rendering was completed in the Pixar Renderfarm, which is powered by 250 Sun Enterprise 4500 servers, running the Solaris(TM) Operating Environment, each using 14 UltraSPARC(TM) II microprocessors, 14 gigabytes of system memory and 196 gigabytes of local disk space for a total of 3,500 processors in production with nearly four terabytes of main memory.
``In building the Pixar Renderfarm, Pixar and Sun harnessed the power of technology to bring imagination to life -- monsters and all,'' said Clark Masters, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Systems Products for Sun Microsystems. ``In our long-term relationship, we've delivered the reliable, scalable and available technology that helps Pixar meet the rigorous requirements of film production, inspiring awe in audiences around the world.''
Pixar's Renderfarm has run on Sun technology for nearly six years through the creation of ``Toy Story,'' ``A Bug's Life'' and ``Toy Story 2.'' For its first implementation in 1995, Pixar adopted Sun's Enterprise 4000 servers, and later migrated to the Enterprise 4500 servers and Sun Fire 3800 servers.
``We've worked with Sun because their computers are powerful, reliable, and easy to manage,'' explained Ed Catmull, President of Pixar Animation Studios. ``We also value Sun's binary compatibility across product generations. By maintaining the continuity of their SPARC chips and the Solaris(TM) Operating Environment, Sun makes it easy for us to take advantage of their newest, most powerful technology.''
For further information visit www.sun.com