DreamWorks Animation goes from AMD to Intel chips

LOS ANGELES (AP) — DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., maker of the "Shrek" movies and "Kung Fu Panda," announced Tuesday it will switch from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. computer chips to Intel Corp.'s as it moves toward making all 3-D movies.

The studio's relationship with AMD started in 2005, back when animating animal fur was a key industry milestone.

With that achieved in the very furry "Kung Fu Panda," released last month, the animation house is following through on a commitment made last year to make all its movies in 3-D starting with "Monsters vs. Aliens," which is scheduled for release in March 2009.

The 3-D format requires twice the computing power of traditional animation because viewers' right and left eyes receive separate images, meaning it can take up to 16 hours to process a single frame, the company said.

"Our artists, to a large degree, actually work blind," DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "They send it out and have to wait overnight to actually see what they've done."

"The impact of these new chipsets is that it will go from overnight to hours to minutes," he said. "Within a handful of years — or less, actually — we may achieve the Holy Grail of our business, which is to actually work in real time. So it's actually, literally in the moment of creation, you can see your work."

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