In this paper we describe the design, programming interface, and implementation of a very efficient user-programmable vertex engine. The vertex engine of NVIDIA’s GeForce3 GPU evolved from a highly tuned fixed-function pipeline requiring considerable knowledge to program. Programs operate only on a stream of independent vertices traversing the pipe. Embedded in the broader fixed function pipeline, our approach preserves parallelism sacrificed by previous approaches. The programmer is presented with a straightforward programming model, which is supported by transparent multi-threading and bypassing to preserve parallelism and performance. In the remainder of the paper we discuss the motivation behind our design and contrast it with previous work. We present the programming model, the instruction set selection process, and

A vast amount of work has been done in recent years on the design, analysis, implementation and verification of special purpose parallel computing systems. This paper presents a survey of various aspects of this work. A long, but by no means complete, bibliography is given. 1. Introduction Turing [365] demonstrated that, in principle, a single general purpose sequential machine could be designed which would be capable of efficiently performing any computation which could be performed by a special purpose sequential machine. The importance of this universality result for subsequent practical developments in computing cannot be overstated. It showed that, for a given computational problem, the additional efficiency advantages which could be gained by designing a special purpose sequential machine for that problem would not be great. Around 1944, von Neumann produced a proposal [66, 389] for a general purpose storedprogram sequential computer which captured the fundamental principles of...

In this paper, we present a method for real-time visual simulation of diverse dynamic phenomena using programmable graphics hardware. The simulations we implement use an extension of cellular automata known as the coupled map lattice (CML). CML represents the state of a dynamic system as continuous values on a discrete lattice. In our implementation we store the lattice values in a texture, and use pixel-level programming to implement simple next-state computations on lattice nodes and their neighbors. We apply these computations successively to produce interactive visual simulations of convection, reaction-diffusion, and boiling. We have built an interactive framework for building and experimenting with CML simulations running on graphics hardware, and have integrated them into interactive 3D graphics applications.

In computer graphics, rendering is the process by which an abstract description of a scene is converted to an image. When the scene is complex, or when high-quality images or high frame rates are required, the rendering process becomes computationally demanding. To provide the necessary levels of performance, parallel computing techniques must be brought to bear. Although parallelism has been exploited in computer graphics since the early days of the field, its initial use was primarily in specialized applications. The VLSI revolution of the late 1970Õs and the advent of scalable parallel computers during the late 1980Õs changed this situation. Today, parallel hardware is routinely used in graphics workstations, and numerous software-based rendering systems have been developed for general-purpose parallel architectures. This article provides a broad introduction to the subject of parallel rendering, encompassing both hardware and software systems. The focus is on the underlying concepts and the issues which arise in the design of parallel rendering algorithms and systems. We examine the different types of parallelism and how they can be applied in rendering applications. Concepts from parallel computing, such as data decomposition, task granularity, scalability, and load balancing, are considered in relation to the rendering

Database and Display Algorithms for Interactive Visualization of Architectural Models by Thomas Allen Funkhouser Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of California at Berkeley Professor Carlo H. S'equin , Chair This thesis describes a system for interactive walkthroughs of large, fully furnished architectural models. Realistic-looking architectural models with furniture may consist of millions of polygons and require gigabytes of data -- far more than today's workstations can render at interactive frame rates or fit into memory simultaneously. In order to achieve interactive walkthroughs of such large building models, a system must store in memory and render only a small portion of the model in each frame; that is, the portion seen by the observer. As the observer "walks" through the model, some parts of the model become visible and others become invisible; some objects appear larger and others appear smaller. The challenge is to identify the relevant portions of the m...

Procedural solid texturing was introduced fourteen years ago, but has yet to find its way into consumer level graphics hardware for real-time operation. To this end, a new model is introduced that yields a parameterized function capable of synthesizing the most common procedural solid textures, specifically wood, marble, clouds and fire. This model is simple enough to be implemented in hardware, and can be realized in VLSI with as little as 100,000 gates. The new model also yields a new method for antialiasing synthesized textures. An expression for the necessary box filter width is derived as a function of the texturing parameters, the texture coordinates and the rasterization variables. Given this filter width, a technique for efficiently box filtering the synthesized texture by either mip mapping the color table or using a summed area color table are presented. Examples of the antialiased results are shown.

Global illumination is an area of research which tries to develop algorithms and methods to render images of

Abstract not found

The production of realistic image generated by computer requires a huge amount of computation and a large memory capacity. The use of highly parallel computers allows this process to be performed faster. Distributed memory parallel computers (DMPCs), such as hypercubes or transputer-based machines, offer an attractive performance/cost ratio when the load balancing has been balance and the partition of the data domain has been performed. This paper presents a parallel ray tracing algorithm for DMPC using a Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) which solves these two classical problems. This algorithm has been implemented on a hypercube iPSC/2 and results are given. 1 Introduction The ray tracing technique is well known both for its ability to provide high quality images and its requirement in memory and computation power. Despite recent research for improving ray tracing algorithms, they are still too slow. The use of highly parallel computers is one way to decrease synthesis time. These machin...

Figure 1: Examples of interactively rendering complex and dynamic scenes with a ray-tracing-based renderer. The scenes show a pre-lighted theatre, robots moving through a city, large numbers of moving trees with sharp shadows, as well as the integration of volumes, lightfields, and procedural shading in an office environment. These examples run interactively at a resolution of 640 × 480 using four to eight dual PCs. Ray-tracing is well-known as a general and flexible rendering algorithm that generates high-quality images. But in the past, raytracing implementations were too slow to be used in an interactive context. Recently, the performance of ray-tracing has been increased by over an order of magnitude, making it interesting as an alternative to rasterization-based rendering. We present a new rendering engine for interactive 3D graphics based on a fast, scalable, and distributed ray-tracer. It offers an extended OpenGL-like API, supports interactive modifications of the scene, handles complex scenes with millions of polygons, and scales efficiently to many client machines. We demonstrate that the new renderer provides more flexibility, more rendering features, and higher performance for complex scenes than current rasterization hardware. Its flexibility enables new types of applications including a system for interactive global illumination.