GridIron Software (Ottawa, Canada) is turning its focus from grids, clusters and render farms to individual multi-processor and multi-core workstations. GridIron Nucleo for Adobe After Effects ($149.95), set for release later this month, allows After Effects to run in parallel on multi-processor or multi-core Windows and Mac desktops. Users working at the highest resolutions, such as 2K and 4K VFX work, will see the most dramatic performance improvements, but GridIron stresses that After Effects users will get improved performance in any environment, including creating content for the Web.
“Working at 4K and 2K, you’re getting into scenarios where it takes a minute and a half or two minutes to render a single frame,” says GridIron CEO Steve Forde. “With a dual CPU, we’re averaging about a 40 percent decrease in time to render and preview. In the quad scenario – dual CPU and dual-core processing – we’re averaging 60 to 70 percent decreases in render time. Higher resolutions will obviously see a tremendous benefit, but there is no situation where Nucleo ever slows down After Effects.”
Basically, Forde explains, Nucleo is designed to properly utilize the performance potential of all available CPUs in parallel – something the current version of After Effects wasn’t designed to do. “There is a big disconnect between the software and the hardware industry,” he says. “The software industry was relying on CPU vendors to come up with faster chips, but the CPU vendors took a 90 degree turn. They added more cores, but the single CPU was the same. So the software doesn’t intrinsically understand how to utilize those new CPUs.”
It’s not a problem that’s limited to visual effects. Look for two new products in the Nucleo line with ramifications for editing and encoding content to be announced in time for NAB.
GridIron is best known for its X-Factor products, which offer performance enhancements running After Effects and Windows Media Encoder on multiple computers in networks owned by large clients such as Viacom and Turner Broadcasting.