Am finally upgrading to some new hardware and have a few general houdini/linux/networking questions. Apologies in advance if I missed these answers elsewhere.

- Can ifds generated on a machine running a 64-bit version of OS/Houdini be rendered on a machine running a 32-bit version of OS/Houdini? (Assuming amount of memory is not an issue).

- Are there any reasons to avoid mixing 32 & 64 bit OS/Houdini systems in a networked production environment?

- Do you HAVE to install a 64-bit OS on 64-bit capable machine?

- Do you HAVE to install a 64-bit Houdini on a 64-bit capable machine?

Thanks

- Can ifds generated on a machine running a 64-bit version of OS/Houdini be rendered on a machine running a 32-bit version of OS/Houdini?

Yup. Just make sure you have 32 and 64 bit compiled custom so/dlls if you use them.

- Are there any reasons to avoid mixing 32 & 64 bit OS/Houdini systems in a networked production environment?

No, but there are *some* circumstances where certain things have caused differences between the renders, but so far has only been caught in passing in the wild. I haven't seen it yet, some have. I wouldn't sweat it, though.

- Do you HAVE to install a 64-bit OS on 64-bit capable machine?

Depends on the OS. Windows makes it easy(since they're still paranoid about their 64 bit drivers I guess). Linux makes it hard.

- Do you HAVE to install a 64-bit Houdini on a 64-bit capable machine?

No, but your python stuff will get all screwed up. That probably translated to a ‘yes’.

Cheers,

J.C.

I know with opensuse it isn't a problem at all to run the 32bit version on a 64 bit machine. If you want to, you could even install a special kernel that takes advantage of more than 4gb of memory. You can't run any 64bit programs though.

If you install the 64bit version you can run 32bit programs rather easily since opensuse is completely multilib (that is mixed 32bit and 64bit - if you tell it to aka, some options somewhere during the install proces).

Thanks guys. Very helpful.