Render farm

A render farm is a cluster of computers dedicated to the parallel execution of rendering tasks, typically used in feature film production and visual effects where individual frames may require hours of computation. A job scheduler distributes frames to available compute nodes, which execute rendering software and return completed images to central storage. Modern render farms may comprise thousands of GPUs and CPUs, consuming megawatts of power and representing a significant fraction of a studio's production budget.

The render farm is the unglamorous infrastructure of digital cinema: a warehouse of humming machines optimized not for beauty but for throughput.