Supercomputers/Systems/Sony Pictures Imageworks xSeries Cluster
USA · operational · hpc
Sony Pictures Imageworks xSeries Cluster
Operated by Sony Pictures Imageworks at Sony Pictures Imageworks Culver City Facility .
Phase 1 seed dataset, compiled by hand. These rows were built from public operator, laboratory and vendor sources. A mechanical second-reader pass has since fetched every cited source: 1092 of 1153 systems have a readable citation that names them, and 40 are genuinely weakly sourced. Every claim carries its source and a confidence tier. Treat anything below verified as a lead, not a citation.
Measured performance
- Rmax
- 1.10 TFlop/s
- Rpeak
- 3.48 TFlop/s
- Rmax ÷ Rpeak
- 31.6%
- Cores
- 568
- Power
- -
- Per watt
- - GF/W
Figures are as last publicly reported for the configuration described below, not a live measurement. Where a system was upgraded in place, the post-upgrade configuration is shown and the earlier one appears in the timeline.
What this machine is made of
One row per supplier relationship. “Supplier at build” is the company that shipped the part at the time; where that company has since been acquired, the parent it rolls up to today is shown beside it. That distinction is what makes ticker-level aggregation possible across a thirty-year dataset.
| Role | Part | Supplier at build | Quantity | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integrator | - IBM eServer xSeries 1U rack servers, dual-processor nodes | IBM | 284 estimated | Reported | top500.org |
| CPU | - Intel Pentium 4 Xeon 3.06GHz | Intel | 568 reported | Reported | top500.org |
The read
Sony Pictures Imageworks' IBM eServer xSeries Linux cluster, 568 Intel Pentium 4 Xeon 3.06GHz cores on Gigabit Ethernet, first appeared on the TOP500 list in November 2003 at rank 107 and last appeared in June 2006 at rank 463, with the same core count and peak figure throughout and an improved Linpack run from June 2004 onward (Rmax up to 2.13 TFlop/s from an initial 1.10 TFlop/s). Post Magazine's July 2004 account of the Spider-Man 2 visual effects pipeline independently describes Imageworks' render farm of that era as IBM, HP and Dell servers in single and dual processor 3GHz configurations on a Gigabit Ethernet backbone, consistent with, though not an exact match for, the TOP500-benchmarked configuration recorded here. Imageworks was headquartered in Culver City, California at the time; production and headquarters relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia by 2014.
Timeline
Public list appearances
Pointers only: rank and edition, linking to the canonical entry. We do not reproduce list tables. See sourcing policy.
Site & facility
Change history
- 2026-09-30 Sony Pictures Imageworks xSeries Cluster added, TOP500-documented IBM xSeries Xeon render cluster used on Spider-Man 2 and other mid-2000s visual effects productions
Source check
We fetched this system's own citations and recorded whether each page actually mentions it. This is a corroboration signal, not a fact check, and it is published so you can see how well the sourcing holds up rather than take it on trust.
| Cited source | Result | Found on the page |
|---|---|---|
| top500.org | names system only | - |
| postmagazine.com | names system only | - |
Checked 2026-10-09 by pnpm verify. Re-run it and the table changes with the web.