NEwer Xeon CPUs will not render hair if motion blur enabled

I have a scene withan animated character with tufts of hair on, and some grass (which isalso hair) sprouting from a mesh that never deforms.

Fairly soon intorendering it, I noticed that motion blur made the fur on thecharacter (which is mesh deformed via armature) would disappear or bevery faint. The grass would flicker but only very slightly; it wouldnot disappear like the fur on the character.

I disabled thegrass’ motion blur at deformation level and removed the character furcompletely. From that point onward, the scene rendered perfectly andthe grass was fine.

However, suddenlyjust the other day, the grass started completely disappearing. If Irender it again with global level motion blur disabled, the grass ispresent. Nothing much has changed apart from I have added otherparticles such as boids flying around in the air to look like flies,and some volumetric mist, and in general the file has got a bitbigger. I have tried gradually removing things to eliminate theproblem whilst still rendering with global motion blur. My process ofelimination has been:

Remove all other particles (such asboids) apart from grass – grass still disappears.
Remove transparentshader node from grass material – grass still disappears.
Reduce cameraclipping distance – grass still disappears.
Remove volumetricmaterials – grass still disappears.
Exclude ALL layers(and therefore all objects) that apart from the layer which only hasthe grass on it – grass still disappears.

In short, I havestripped back the file to what I think it was before the grassstarted disappearing, but nothing works!

As soon as I disable motion blur, the grass appears again.

Strangely, I havejust tried rendering it on a less powerful, older PC (but still quitehigh spec) and everything renders fine!

The newer PC thatdoes NOT render hair motion blur properly:

Windows edition:Windows 10 Pro
Intel® Xeon® CPUE5-2698 v4 @ 2.20GHz 2.20GHz (2 processors)
Installed memory(RAM): 64 GB (63.9 usable)
System type: 64-bitOperating System, x64-based processor


The older, lesspowerful PC that DOES render hair motion blur properly:

Windows edition:Windows 10 Pro
Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2670 0 @ 2.60GHz 2.60GHz (2processors)
Installed memory(RAM): 64 GB
System type: 64-bitOperating System, x64-based processor

This must mean it isa hardware compatibility issue – any ideas anyone?

Turns out that OLD Xeon CPUs can render hair with motion blur in OLD Blender 2.78c.

But NEW Xeon CPUs cannot render hair with motion blur in OLD Blender 2.78c.

HOWEVER!

NEW Xeon CPUs CAN render hair with motion blur in NEW Blender 2.79!

Previously i hadn’t tried that because resaving 2.78c files in 2.79 caused render layer nodes to break when opened again in 2.78c so I was worried it might break other things that will only be known after wasting a weekend rendering… I will report if this happens later…but so far, so good.