Inferno (Autodesk)
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Inferno is a high-end system designed for special effects, originally designed by Discreet (now Autodesk). It is also used in onlining commercials. In the past, Inferno ran on specialised SGI workstations which allowed the Inferno artistic/operator to make changes with a client supervising the session. The fast performance meant that artistic decisions could be made in a session without having to interrupt the session for rendering. Inferno systems are priced in the ballpark of half a million to a million dollars (USD).
As SGI computers began to lag behind in performance compared to other emerging technologies, SGI began to encounter financial troubles and has filed for Chapter 11 protection. Discreet/Autodesk is distancing itself from dependency on SGI products. Future versions of Inferno will run on Linux workstations and take advantage of GPU acceleration. Flame, a lower-end version of Inferno, now runs on Linux workstations.
