The media and entertainment (M&E) industries have long been at the center of society’s innovation — from the printing press and radio to the first moving pictures, television, animation, and video games. As creative industries evolve, consumer demand for the next big thing has only increased. Today, we’re at an inflection point where consumers are expecting fresh and innovative entertainment experiences across film, television, and gaming, and creatives must deliver.
However, this expectation poses many challenges: artists and studios must create a larger volume of higher-fidelity entertainment content than ever before, which in turn requires more compute power to handle the ever-growing datasets. So, while production software is important, having the right workstation to run it is essential. Lenovo is helping creatives in the M&E industry meet this challenge through AI-optimized devices in its Workstation portfolio, working with partners such AMD.
A history of innovation
Since the advent of modern television more than 70 years ago, the medium has constantly been evolving — and the past 20 years especially have seen tremendous growth and innovation. Standard definition TV was ubiquitous up until the late-1990s, when major networks began to embrace HDTV. Adoption was slow, but eventually it became the norm.
Then came 4K, which saw mass adoption once content became more readily available through cable providers and streaming services. In addition to a higher definition picture, 4K also puts more demands on creatives because any time you make resolution changes, the complexity of the required content multiplies. Looking ahead, the industry is currently making great strides on 8K resolution, though widespread adoption is still further in the distance. While this new development will mean incredible picture quality, it will put even higher demands on graphic artists and visual effects professionals.
The right solution for a challenging task
There is a fundamental gap between what artists and studios are being asked to deliver and what they’re able to deliver given imposed timelines and budgets, along with the current tools available. That’s where Lenovo’s Workstation portfolio, powered by AMD, can help bridge the gap between clients’ expectations and the resources needed to deliver the highest-fidelity visual content. Not only has the technology progressed, but also the skill of the artists to be able to harness that technology — and the compute power is essential to creating high-quality visuals.
The ThinkStation P8 Workstation helps power-users create revolutionary products better, smarter, and faster than ever before. It combines a breakthrough compute architecture with an advanced thermal design in a rack-optimized, Aston Martin-inspired chassis. Featuring the latest AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 7000 WX-Series processor, up to three NVIDIA RTX™ 6000 Ada Generation graphics, robust PCIe Gen 5 connectivity, and high-speed DDR5 memory, the ThinkStation P8 delivers staggering performance output from a single-socket platform. M&E creatives benefit from the lightning-fast renders, simulations, image processing and simulations, and build/compiling processes for game development.
The ThinkStation P8 workstation was developed directly from customer feedback. By partnering with organizations dedicated to smarter innovation, like AMD, we’re able to make our power users’ needs a top priority. But we don’t just create solutions in a bubble – we include customer input as part of the development process to make sure we deliver what they need and help make their creative process more efficient. In fact, many of the current Workstation features are the result of direct conversation with artists and studios about what they expect and need from the technology.
Lenovo and AMD in action
Wylie Co., founded in 2015 creates pre-viz, post-viz, and visual effects finals for feature films in a very efficient manner, and at a higher quality than most other visual effects studios. The company was brought onboard to work on visual effects for the first Dune movie and had to turn around shots quickly, and at a very high-quality. “To be successful in this business, you have to be incredibly efficient,” says Jacob Maymudes, Wylie Co. founder and CEO. “In order to do that you need the best hardware.”
Through research Wylie Company found the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO, which he describes as having an “unfathomable amount of bandwidth.” Deploying Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstations, powered by Threadripper PRO, helped the Wylie team turn around hundreds of post-viz and final shots needed to complete the movie’s stunning visuals. “It enabled us to turn around incredible amounts of iterations and be incredibly efficient with our team,” Maymudes says.
Looking ahead
With the promise that AI will make our lives and jobs easier comes the concern that it could replace certain jobs. But that simply isn’t the case. If anything, it will be more of an assistant to the artist, allowing them to focus more on more of the creative aspects of the project versus the technical components.
The world of production is rapidly changing, and artists and studios require the technology — hardware and software — to create content across film, television, streaming, and gaming that meets consumer demand. By working with companies like AMD, Lenovo is delivering on the promise of being a valued technology partner now and in the future.