When AMD made its 64-core Ryzen Threadripper 3 available in February, the company doubled the amount of cores and threads from the CPU’s previous iteration. This latest version gives users the ability to edit 8K in real time and significantly speeds up visual effects and rendering workflows.

We spoke to James Knight, AMD’s visual effects and M&E director, to help us dig a little deeper.

AMD is offering Ryzen Threadripper 3 with 64 cores. Can you tell those who might not know what that means for M&E workflows?
With the 32-core Threadripper, we are already giving VFX artists the ability to do way more iterations within the same deadlines. And for post facilities, it’s the ability to do realtime 8K post if they so desire. Now with the 3990X, which is the 64-core workstation CPU, this process is on steroids. Particularly if you’re rendering or want to combine 8K workflows with visual effects in realtime.

To filter it down, VFX artists can now revise or iterate their shots more than they ever have before, with the same deadlines. So that means artists gets more time with their visual effects than ever before.

Can you talk about the jump from Threadripper 2 to Threadripper 3? It sounds like a giant step forward.
It really was. However good the leap from Gen 1 Threadripper was to Gen 2, we knew we could make a bigger leap with our Gen 3, and we did just that. We knew it would be a big step forward.

You’ve been partnering with filmmakers to make sure this is the technology they need, very notably Tim Miller. Can you talk about what those relationships mean for product development?
These types of relationships are key to the success of our new CPUs. They are not simple or straightforward to maintain. Many of us in VFX have relationships that have the professional caliber of, say, Tim Miller and Blur Studio, but in order for them to use our newest technology on big feature films, TV and gaming cinematics, our performance has to be very impressive before they’ll switch from what they’re used to. If a visual effects supervisor or artist is going to get behind our new CPU on a household-name IP, it’s implied the CPU works... and works well.

In the case with Blur and Tim Miller, we were able to change the way they produced their visual effects for Terminator: Dark Fate. For example, for the sequence that provides the backstory of the main character, they were able to add more layers, do more complex photogrammetry, and iterate all that so much faster than they were used to, and yet all with the same deadline. It was as though we’d magically given them more time. We are seeing this same thing happening anywhere that uses Threadripper or EPYC, our server CPUs. (For a behind-the-scenes look at Tim Miller and Blur's work with the Ryzen Threadripper 3, click here.)

AMD is also working with Red Digital Cinema, who is using Threadripper 3 to edit 8K footage in real time — including footage from the film Échappé (our main image), directed by Allison Mattox and shot by cinematographer Beth Napoli.

How does your own personal experience as a VFX pro help when dealing with these filmmakers?
It helps in a few ways. First, understanding filmmakers’ challenges, knowing VFX and post pipelines, and staying current on many other feature film/TV technologies helps. My experience in visual effects on feature films is what got me such relationships. VFX, in general, seems like a small community sometimes, in that we are usually connected by one or two degrees of separation.

I have worked in VFX at a high level. I’m a member of the Visual Effects Society and the Visual Effects branch of BAFTA, and I was on the Sci-Tech Committee at the Academy for five years. That all lends validation when talking to a big studio, VFX or post house. Even if we’ve not met before, the chances are we have contacts in common. I’ve worked in post and VFX for close to 20 years now, at places like Crawford Post Production, 20th Century Fox VFX Lab, Giant Studios, Sony Imageworks and more.

We know that Threadripper 3 helps with VFX rendering, but it could also speed up the post workflow as well... editing, color grading, etc.?
The tech push now is for 8K, so guess what that means? The need to edit it. Before the 64-core Threadripper, if you shot 8K, you had to down-res and then do your offline edit. Then you’d likely pay to go to a big post house to do your online edit. With the 3990X, that all changes. AMD has essentially eliminated that qualifier before the word edit. There’s no “offline” or “online” anymore … it’s just “edit.” You can now edit 8K in real time without even taxing the GPU. That has not happened before.