EGGH97: SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Workshop on Graphics Hardware 1997

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https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/338

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Browsing EGGH97: SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Workshop on Graphics Hardware 1997 by Subject "Graphics Processors"

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    Codesign Of Graphics Hardware Accelerators
    (The Eurographics Association, 1997) Ewins, Jon P.; L.Watten, Phil; White, Martin; McNeill, Michael D. J.; Lister, Paul F.; A. Kaufmann and W. Strasser and S. Molnar and B.-O. Schneider
    The design of a hardware architecture for a computer graphics pipeline requires a thorough understanding of the algorithms involved at each stage, and the implications these algorithms have on the organisation of the pipeline architecture. The choice of algorithm, the flow of pixel data through the pipeline, and bit width precision issues are crucial decisions in the design of new hardware accelerators. Making these decisions correctly requires intensive investigation and experimentation. The use of hardware description languages such as VHDL, allow for sound top down design methodologies, but their effectiveness in such experimental work is limited. This paper discusses the use of software tools as an aid to hardware development and presents applications that demonstrate the possibilities of this approach and the benefits that can be attained from an integrated codesign design environment.
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    Design Of A High Performance Volume Visualization System
    (The Eurographics Association, 1997) Lichtenbelt, Barthold; A. Kaufmann and W. Strasser and S. Molnar and B.-O. Schneider
    Visualizing three dimensional discrete datasets has been a topic of many research projects and papers in the past decade. We discuss the issues that come up when designing a whole computer system capable of visualizing these datasets in real time. We explain the three way chicken and egg problem and discuss Hewlett- Packard s effort at breaking it with the Voxelator API extensions to OpenGL. We enumerate what a good hardware design should accomplish. We discuss what system issues are important and show how to integrate volume visualization hardware in one of Hewlett-Packard s graphics accelerators, the VISUALIZE-48XP. We show why the Voxelator is an efficient and well designed API by explaining how various existing hardware engines will easily fit into the Voxelator framework.
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    Towards Real-Time Photorealistic Rendering: Challenges and Solutions
    (The Eurographics Association, 1997) Schilling, Andreas; A. Kaufmann and W. Strasser and S. Molnar and B.-O. Schneider
    A growing number of real-time applications need graphics with photorealistic quality, especially in the field of training (virtual operation, driving and flightsimulation), but also in the areas of design or ergonomic research. We take a closer look at main deficiencies of today s real time graphics hardware and present solutions for several of the identified problems in the areas of antialiasing and texture-. bump- and reflection mapping. In the second part of the paper, a new method for antialiasing bump maps is explained in more detail.
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    VIZARD - Visualization Accelerator for Realtime Display
    (The Eurographics Association, 1997) Knittel, Günter; Straßer, Wolfgang; A. Kaufmann and W. Strasser and S. Molnar and B.-O. Schneider
    Volume rendering has traditionally been an application for supercomputers, workstation networks or expensive special-purpose hardware. In contrast, this report shows how far we have reached using the other extreme: the low-end PC platform. We have alleviated the mismatch between this demanding application and the limited computational resources of a PC in three ways: several stages in the visualization pipeline are placed into a preprocessing step, the volume rendering algorithm was optimized using a special data compression scheme, and the algorithm has been implemented in hardware as a PCI-compatible coprocessor (lXZ,4RD). These methods give us a frame rate of up to 1OHz for 256 <sup>3</sup> data sets and an acceptable image quality, although the accelerator prototype was built using relatively slow FPGA-technology. In a low-cost environment a coprocessor must not be more expensive than the host itself, and so VIZARD was designed to be manufacturable for a few hundred dollars. The special data compression scheme allows the data set to be placed into the main memory of the PC and eliminates the need for an expensive, separate volume memory. The entire visualization system consists of a portable PC with two built-in accelerator boards. Despite its small size, the system provides perspective raycasting for realtime walk-throughs. Additional features include stereoscopic viewing using shutter glasses and volume animation.