It may be one of the untidiest takeovers for several years, but Silicon Graphics Inc’s bid for Cray Research Inc may drastically reduce the number of workstations needed to create computer- generated movies such as Toy Story. Creative graphics rendering work is now at such an advanced stage that in many cases workstations have to be hooked up in parallel to provide the graphics power required to do what the animators ask. In the case of Toy Story, Walt Disney Co’s latest all-computer-generated movie (CI No 2,820), Pixar Animations Inc used a record 117 Silicon Graphics workstations to create the movie. It is hoped that the incorporation of technology Cray, known world-wide for its expertise in building supercomputers will make quite a good rendering engine for Silicon Graphics.
