Efficient use of Multiple Hardware Components for Image Synthesis
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
With the advent of affordable and powerful computers systems, even in desktop configurations, the rapid rendering of complex scenes using global illumination algorithms is within reach. However, some significant problems
still must be dealt with when performing such physically based lighting simulations i we are to achieve real time performance on current technology. The power offered by modern computer systems is not only due to the increasing CPU capabilities, but also to the fast development of others system elements, including graphics processing units (GPU) and other additional processing boards. Ray tracing implementations in such environments
typically target only one hardware component, or at best map specific type of work to particular elements within
the system. This approach leads to an unbalanced work distribution and marginalisation of certain types of resources. Jn this paper we present a framework for managing and interfacing all the available computational power within a modern PC in a balanced and efficient way. At the centre of proposed approach is an abstraction
layer between the main rendering stage and the primitives of the rendering process. Several advantages of such
organisation are discussed, including portability and ea.ry extendibility to newer powerful hardware resources
as they become available, optimizations at resource level, modularity, and load balancing. More practical issues regarding the management strategy and implementation for heterogeneous environments below this level o ab
straction, where performance is a key aspect, are also presented. To validate this model a set of experiments were conducted. The results have shown that the introduction of an abstraction layer into the rendering system
can improve the performance and better use the available resources.
Description
@inproceedings{10.2312:pt.20091231,
booktitle = {ACTAS DO 17º ENCONTRO PORTUGUÊS DE COMPUTAÇÃO GRÁFICA},
editor = {Coelho, António and Cláudio, Ana Paula},
title = {{Efficient use of Multiple Hardware Components for Image Synthesis}},
author = {Pereira, Francisco and Moura, João Paulo and Magalhães, José Afonso Bulas Cruz Luís and Chamers, Alan},
year = {2021},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association},
ISBN = {978-3-03868-154-0},
DOI = {10.2312/pt.20091231}
}