Isdale.es@XEROX.ARPA (07/17/84)
>Question: How does a start-up company like Digital Productions >acquire a Cray X-MP? Are they buying time on it? Or, are they >leasing it? Or what? DP owns the CRAY (actually BofA owns it). The founders managed to locate a company with lots of excess profits and a strong interest in computer graphics...Ramtek Corp. a major manufacturer of CG hardware. Ramtek has poured many millions into DP and has backed the BofA loans. Also DP was able to convince CRAY that it would be good publicity and they might someday be able to sell CRAY's with DP's graphics software. The purchase price of the CRAY isnt the real money problem. The operational costs are outrageous.. $50,000/month+ for on site service, 100Kilo Watts per hour power + power for cooling system, etc. etc. When DP isnt using the XMP, they sell time on it thru a subsidiary called Vector Production. Anybody need a few cycles?? A side note: Digital Prod. originally had a used CRAY 1S that Boeing Computer Services traded in for a newer model. The video game scenes, some starfields and most of the star car sequences were filmed on this machine. The X-MP was not installed until December 1983.