IBM Announces All-Linux Digital Studio Solution

Los Angeles (SIGGRAPH 2001), Aug. 15, 2001 -- IBM today announcedthe Linux Digital Studio Solution, IBM's first complete Linux-basedsolution for the media and entertainment industry. The packagerepresents a comprehensive suite of IBM workstations, servers, storageand services all designed to support animators, special-effectswizards, and digital media producers as their work increasingly takesadvantage of Linux.

"Studios are tired of troubleshooting problems where theirworkstation vendor and their server company point fingers at eachother," says Doug Oathout, IBM director of IntelliStation marketing."IBM has a long record of providing end-to-end solutions, especiallyfor the digital content creation space, and the IBM Linux DigitalStudio software and hardware package allows higher system availabilityand greatly reduces the effort to manage and support workgroups."

The solution would enable a studio, for example, to animate a sceneon the IBM IntelliStation M Pro workstation, complete rendering on theshot with the eServer xSeries, store the data on one of several IBMTotalStorage products and technologies, obtain advice, consulting andsupport from IBM Global Services, and financing for all these productsand services from IBM Global Financing. All components of the solutionwork together and are optimized for Linux.

Threshold Entertainment has plans to deploy the IBM Linux DigitalStudio Solution. "Deploying Linux is an investment of resources and anact of faith and will that requires the support of a one-stoptechnology supplier, and we have confidence in IBM as we move in thatdirection," says Larry Kasanoff, chairman and CEO of ThresholdEntertainment. Threshold's franchises include the Mortal Kombatfeature films, website, and TV series. Special effects credits byThreshold Digital Research Labs include The Faculty, I KnowWhat You Did Last Summer, Scary Movie, and TheFlintstones Viva Rock Vegas.

Threshold is also screening a new animated short produced forNickelodeon, Edward Fudwupper Fibbed Big, at SIGGRAPH 2001exhibition space (Booth #1047). The theatrical short was animatedentirely on the IBM IntelliStation M Pro workstation. Directed byBerkeley Breathed, the short is based on his illustrated children'sstory, Edward Fudwupper.

Linux offers numerous advantages for digital media producers.Animation and special effects require substantial processing horsepowerto crunch the motion, lighting, textures, color, shapes, camera angles,and physics of the scene, and Linux occupies fewer processing resourcesand overhead than many other operating systems, which can result insignificant performance advantages. The source code is essentiallyfree; studios can modify it themselves, and it runs on lower-cost,standard hardware than UNIX-based variants.

IBM works closely with the open-source community and will invest $1billion in Linux initiatives this year. Linux is the revolutionaryopen-source operating system that offers a high level of reliabilityand is being adopted in many corporate and industry settings. Accordingto industry analyst IDC, Linux is the fastest growing serverenvironment operating system and will have 38% of the market by theyear 2004.