GPU Cloud Rendering

[mexrenderer]

Hey folks, I just wrote up my experience of using the new Azure N-series VMs for cloud rendering from my laptop !

https://medium.com/@gettingreal/gpu-...922#.fhpmags1g

[antonyebl]

interesting read; a few thoughts;

- it's reliant on fast internet connection from client's side

- render farms already provide similar function (even built-in A360 cloud rendering); possibly 'simpler' as one doesn't have to care about installing VM/remote desktop (just hit render button; for that one needs to install script too tho so it's 'comparable' > price decides)

- @2.92$/hr it's ok but not that cheap either; e.g for @~3000e you can build 4x gtx1070 rig; which equals ~1100 work hours; @8hrs/day @20days/month = 7 months pay-off;
(of course there's electricity/maintanance cost etc on top) but it doesn't seem a clear-cut win for cloud-rendering yet

[mexrenderer]

good points - here are some comments :

The internet does need to be good, but a normal domestic connection with over 30 mbps seems fine for me. Actually what Ive been doing is modelling locally on my laptop, because responsiveness is everything here, and then uploading via onedrive to my VM and alt-tabbing to my remote desktop to do materials and rendering.

Some render farms do have GPUs, but most are just CPU farms. I may be wrong but I feel Azure is unique in that the GPUs are physically connected to the VM you provision, and you access them through the remote desktop - so you get live updates in the RT monitor as if it were your local desktop. This is different to sending a file to be network rendered and waiting for the result to be sent back.

Yeah totally agree... its not that cheap for the performance of these GPUs. I am hoping that soon they change to the Pascal architecture and then it'll blow anything out of the water (I don't know anyone who could afford 8 titan x's, but imagine if you could get them just for the night if you had a special render to do...)