The Rensselaer Learning Continuum

The Rensselaer Learning Continuum

Pre-College Undergraduate Professional-Ed Grad & Research Lifelong Learning Commercialization

Architecture Rendering Farm

The School of Architecture is planning to integrate the most advanced Intel-based tools into their design curriculum through the development of a state-of-the-art facility for visualization and rendering. Intel equipment will be deployed at both the front-end and back-end of the system, providing students with high-end workstations and with a large-scale rendering backplane. This facility will subsantially change the role of teaching animation and simulation in the design curriculum, and will facilitate presentations of architectural work in virtual reality and multimedia.

Principal Investigator

Brian Lonsway, Assistant Professor, Architecture
Director of Informatics and Architecture
lonsway@rpi.edu

Equipment Received

Nine single processor workstations and three 400MHZ Pentium II systems
Six dual processor workstations and two dual 400MHZ Pentium II systems
Two quad WS/Srv

Status Report

To date, we have been preparing behind-the-scenes for a major release/presentation of the new equipment for a Spring semester formal opening of our studio305 workspace (www.rpi.edu/dept/arch/305). The Intel equipment that we have received is currently being prepared for the following uses:

dual-processor file server, with 45Gb of storage for advanced graphic, animation, and simulation files;
dual-processor non-linear digital editing workstation, with Matrox DigiSuite LE hardware, Digital-S video equipment, and 18Gb of local project storage;
8-processor rendering server, with 256Mb RAM per processor for 8-fold speed increases in photo-real rendering, advanced computational simulation, and VR simulation;
distributed computing, with 4 workstations on mobile carts (www.ergotron.com) for high-end rendering, CAD, and graphically intensive architectural design applications.