The new offering enables grid computing for consumers and small-to-medium businesses. GridIron's software will be embedded into Adobe's product, so end users will not have to take care of any configuration or management tasks required to run the computing jobs across a group of computers.

GridIron Software also announced upgrades to its XLR8 grid computing software. Version 2.0 offers improved security features and data transfer capabilities.

Adobe After Effects delivers the tools to produce motion graphics and effects for film, video, DVD and the Web. Adobe will use GridIron Software's grid computing technology to increase the speed of the preview and rendering capabilities of Adobe After Effects by dividing and distributing the work ordinarily performed on a single computer among several computers joined together in a network.

The bundled grid technology is expected to provide linear performance improvement, so preview and rendering will be completed nearly twice as fast on two computers than on one, three times as fast on three computers, and so on. Setting up a grid to achieve this increased speed is accomplished by installing the GridIron XLR8 and After Effects software components and connecting the computers together via a network.

"GridIron's technology provides Adobe After Effects with increased speed at a low cost without the need to spend time allocating resources or configuring your network," said Steve Kilisky, group product manager for Adobe After Effects. "Adobe After Effects Professional users are now unleashed from time or processing constraints that previously limited their creative efforts."

GridIron XLR8 features a peer-to-peer architecture that allows the computers to discover each other and automatically set up a processing network, distribute work, and recover from failure.