Pub Date : 2003-10-20DOI: 10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249047
S. Muraki, E. Lum, K. Ma, M. Ogata, Xuezhen Liu
A number of problems are well suited for volumetric representation for both simulation and storage, however, the large amount of data that needs to be processed and rendered with these volumes makes interactive manipulation extremely challenging. We present a scalable PC cluster system (VG cluster) designed specifically to enable simultaneous volumetric computation and visualization, using compositing hardware devices and the latest PC graphics accelerators. We demonstrate the flexibility and performance of this system with several different applications that include reaction-diffusion simulation, volumetric image processing, and vector field visualization. We also discuss how to improve the visual computing performance of this system with some load balancing techniques.
{"title":"A PC cluster system for simultaneous interactive volumetric modeling and visualization","authors":"S. Muraki, E. Lum, K. Ma, M. Ogata, Xuezhen Liu","doi":"10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249047","url":null,"abstract":"A number of problems are well suited for volumetric representation for both simulation and storage, however, the large amount of data that needs to be processed and rendered with these volumes makes interactive manipulation extremely challenging. We present a scalable PC cluster system (VG cluster) designed specifically to enable simultaneous volumetric computation and visualization, using compositing hardware devices and the latest PC graphics accelerators. We demonstrate the flexibility and performance of this system with several different applications that include reaction-diffusion simulation, volumetric image processing, and vector field visualization. We also discuss how to improve the visual computing performance of this system with some load balancing techniques.","PeriodicalId":307148,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Symposium on Parallel and Large-Data Visualization and Graphics, 2003. PVG 2003.","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122848567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-10-20DOI: 10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249045
I. Wald, Carsten Benthin, P. Slusallek
Recently developed interactive ray tracing systems combine the high performance of todays CPUs with new algorithms and implementations to achieve a flexible and high-performance rendering system offering high-quality, but nonetheless interactive 3D graphics. However, due to its history in offline rendering, interactive ray tracing is usually limited to static scenes and simple walkthroughs. In order to become truly interactive ray tracing must efficiently support dynamic scenes. We present a simple and practical method that allows to interactively ray trace dynamic scenes in a distributed PC cluster environment. Our method separates the scene into independent objects with common properties concerning dynamic updates - similar to OpenGL display lists and scene graph libraries. Three classes of objects are distinguished: static objects are treated as before, objects undergoing affine transformations are handled by transforming rays, and objects with unstructured motion are rebuilt whenever necessary. We present performance and scalability results of our system using a variety of test scenes stressing a wide range of dynamic behaviour.
{"title":"Distributed interactive ray tracing of dynamic scenes","authors":"I. Wald, Carsten Benthin, P. Slusallek","doi":"10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249045","url":null,"abstract":"Recently developed interactive ray tracing systems combine the high performance of todays CPUs with new algorithms and implementations to achieve a flexible and high-performance rendering system offering high-quality, but nonetheless interactive 3D graphics. However, due to its history in offline rendering, interactive ray tracing is usually limited to static scenes and simple walkthroughs. In order to become truly interactive ray tracing must efficiently support dynamic scenes. We present a simple and practical method that allows to interactively ray trace dynamic scenes in a distributed PC cluster environment. Our method separates the scene into independent objects with common properties concerning dynamic updates - similar to OpenGL display lists and scene graph libraries. Three classes of objects are distinguished: static objects are treated as before, objects undergoing affine transformations are handled by transforming rays, and objects with unstructured motion are rebuilt whenever necessary. We present performance and scalability results of our system using a variety of test scenes stressing a wide range of dynamic behaviour.","PeriodicalId":307148,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Symposium on Parallel and Large-Data Visualization and Graphics, 2003. PVG 2003.","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115753718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2003-07-15DOI: 10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249041
E. W. Bethel, G. Humphreys, Brian E. Paul, J. D. Brederson
While commodity computing and graphics hardware has increased in capacity and dropped in cost, it is still quite difficult to make effective use of such systems for general-purpose parallel visualization and graphics. We describe the results of a recent project that provides a software infrastructure suitable for general-purpose use by parallel visualization and graphics applications. Our work combines and extends two technologies: chromium, a stream-oriented framework that implements the OpenGL programming interface; and OpenRM scene graph, a pipelined-parallel scene graph interface for graphics data management. Using this combination, we implement a sort-first, distributed memory, parallel volume rendering application. We describe the performance characteristics in terms of bandwidth requirements and highlight key algorithmic considerations needed to implement the sort-first system. We characterize system performance using a distributed memory parallel volume rendering application, and present performance gains realized by using scene specific knowledge to accelerate rendering by reducing network traffic. The contribution of this work is an exploration of general-purpose, sort-first architecture performance characteristics as applied to distributed memory, commodity hardware, along with a description of the algorithmic support needed to realize parallel, sort-first implementations.
{"title":"Sort-first, distributed memory parallel visualization and rendering","authors":"E. W. Bethel, G. Humphreys, Brian E. Paul, J. D. Brederson","doi":"10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/PVGS.2003.1249041","url":null,"abstract":"While commodity computing and graphics hardware has increased in capacity and dropped in cost, it is still quite difficult to make effective use of such systems for general-purpose parallel visualization and graphics. We describe the results of a recent project that provides a software infrastructure suitable for general-purpose use by parallel visualization and graphics applications. Our work combines and extends two technologies: chromium, a stream-oriented framework that implements the OpenGL programming interface; and OpenRM scene graph, a pipelined-parallel scene graph interface for graphics data management. Using this combination, we implement a sort-first, distributed memory, parallel volume rendering application. We describe the performance characteristics in terms of bandwidth requirements and highlight key algorithmic considerations needed to implement the sort-first system. We characterize system performance using a distributed memory parallel volume rendering application, and present performance gains realized by using scene specific knowledge to accelerate rendering by reducing network traffic. The contribution of this work is an exploration of general-purpose, sort-first architecture performance characteristics as applied to distributed memory, commodity hardware, along with a description of the algorithmic support needed to realize parallel, sort-first implementations.","PeriodicalId":307148,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Symposium on Parallel and Large-Data Visualization and Graphics, 2003. PVG 2003.","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130214794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}