--- title: Rendering on Arm Linux is faster, cheaper (and possible now) description: SideFX has announced a technical preview of Houdini for ARM Linux, marking a significant milestone for VFX workloads on ARM architecture. Testing shows ARM... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/rendering-on-arm-linux-is-faster-cheaper-and-possible-now--tekjxweif twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Rendering on Arm Linux is faster, cheaper (and possible now) | daily.dev og:description: SideFX has announced a technical preview of Houdini for ARM Linux, marking a significant milestone for VFX workloads on ARM architecture. Testing shows ARM... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/rendering-on-arm-linux-is-faster-cheaper-and-possible-now--tekjxweif og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/teKJxwEiF.png og:image:alt: Rendering on Arm Linux is faster, cheaper (and possible now) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Rendering on Arm Linux is faster, cheaper (and possible now) **[YouTube](https://daily.dev/sources/youtube)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary SideFX has announced a technical preview of Houdini for ARM Linux, marking a significant milestone for VFX workloads on ARM architecture. Testing shows ARM cloud instances (like AWS Graviton 5) are significantly cheaper for rendering jobs — roughly half the cost of AMD EPYC instances for the same workload. A 3-second shark render costs ~$40 on AMD but ~$20 on ARM. The author tested Houdini on an Adlink ARM workstation, confirming CPU, GPU, and blended rendering modes work natively. The broader trend points to more commercial software gaining full ARM Linux support, improving code portability and potentially paving the way for future RISC-V support. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Does Houdini support ARM Linux now? Yes, SideFX released a technical preview of Houdini for ARM Linux that runs natively and supports CPU, GPU, and blended rendering modes. It was tested internally by SideFX on an Adlink ARM dev workstation. This makes Houdini one of the first major commercial VFX applications to fully utilize ARM Linux hardware. _Teams weighing a move to ARM-based rendering pipelines can follow Houdini's ARM Linux rollout on daily.dev._ ### Is rendering cheaper on ARM cloud instances like AWS Graviton compared to AMD EPIC? Yes, a test render using SideFX's Houdini engine showed a 3-second shark render costing about 40 dollars on an AMD EPIC (Zen 5) AWS instance versus roughly half that price on an AWS Graviton ARM instance. The Graviton 48XL instance offers 192 cores with the best price-to-performance ratio among AWS instances, thanks to faster memory access despite lower clock speeds. _Anyone budgeting cloud render farms can weigh ARM versus AMD instance costs through coverage tracked on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [New H4D VMs optimized for HPC](https://daily.dev/posts/new-h4d-vms-optimized-for-hpc-imeof8y9s) · Google Cloud · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [NVIDIA DGX Spark: great hardware, early days for the ecosystem](https://daily.dev/posts/nvidia-dgx-spark-great-hardware-early-days-for-the-ecosystem-8avhsyx0d) · Simon Willison · 6 upvotes · 0 comments - [ARM Linux Server Performance Up More Than 7x Geo Mean In 8 Years, As Much As 15x With NVIDIA Vera CPU](https://daily.dev/posts/arm-linux-server-performance-up-more-than-7x-geo-mean-in-8-years-as-much-as-15x-with-nvidia-vera-cp-jlxrmmw3i) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#cloud](https://daily.dev/tags/cloud), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#3d](https://daily.dev/tags/3d), [#arm](https://daily.dev/tags/arm) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/rendering-on-arm-linux-is-faster-cheaper-and-possible-now--tekjxweif) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Rendering on Arm Linux is faster, cheaper (and possible now)","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rendering-on-arm-linux-is-faster-cheaper-and-possible-now--tekjxweif","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/rendering-on-arm-linux-is-faster-cheaper-and-possible-now--tekjxweif"},"datePublished":"2026-07-20T16:07:49.530Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:52:07.690Z","description":"SideFX has announced a technical preview of Houdini for ARM Linux, marking a significant milestone for VFX workloads on ARM architecture. 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