A supercomputer used to create special effects in the Lord of the Rings fantasy film trilogy is now open for business in the real world of global commerce, backers said on Thursday.
Ranked 80th among the world’s 500 most powerful computers, it can perform 2,8-trillion calculations a second, said New Zealand Supercomputing Centre spokesperson Eric Pilon.
The centre is a venture by Weta Digital — Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson’s special effects studio — and Gen-i, a subsidiary of former telecommunications monopoly New Zealand Telecom.
The two companies said in a statement that they hope to upgrade the computer’s power by adding extra servers – putting it among the world’s top 10 most powerful supercomputers.
Gen-i group general manager Chris Quin said universities, research organisations and businesses will be able to book the supercomputer’s processing capacity ”on demand”.
The centre is expected to be used for tasks such as computer-aided engineering and economic and financial modeling, Quin said.
Project spokesperson Scott Houston said Weta Digital could also use the centre for coming films.
Weta Digital is jointly owned by Jackson and fellow Oscar winners Richard Taylor and Jamie Selkirk.
Jackson’s studios started filming a remake of 1933 classic King Kong on Monday. He has already said the movie’s giant ape will be entirely computer-generated. ‒ Sapa-AP