Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Message handling in parallel radiance

  • 6 Applications in Science and Engineering
  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Recent Advances in Parallel Virtual Machine and Message Passing Interface (EuroPVM/MPI 1997)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1332))

  • 94 Accesses

Abstract

Photo-realistic computer graphics is an area of research which tries to develop algorithms and methods to render images of artificial models or worlds as realistically as possible, by carrying out lighting simulations. Such algorithms are known for their unpredictable data accesses and their high computational complexity. Rendering a single high quality image may take several hours, or even days. For this reason parallel processing must be considered as a viable option to compute images in a reasonable time. The nature of data access patterns and often the sheer size of the scene to be rendered, means that a straightforward parallelisation, if one exists, may not always lead to good performance. This paper discusses a suitable parallelisation of an advanced ray tracing algorithm using PVM, and presents a method of reducing the number of messages required for data and task communication by bundling a number of tasks or data items into a single message.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Ward, G.J.: The radiance lighting simulation and rendering system. ACM Computer Graphics, SIGGRAPH '94 Proceedings. (1994) 459–472

    Google Scholar 

  2. Whitted, T.: An improved illumination model for shaded display. Communications of the ACM, 23 (1980) 343–349

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Glassner, A.S., editor.: An Introduction to Ray Tracing. Academic Press, San Diego, (1989)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Plunkett, D.J., Bailey, M.J.: The vectorization of a ray-tracing algorithm for improved execution speed. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 5 (1985) 52–60

    Google Scholar 

  5. Crow, F.C., Demos, G., Hardy, J., McLaugglin, J., Sims, K.. 3d image synthesis on the connection machine. In Proceedings Parallel Processing for Computer Vision and Display, Leeds, (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Lin, T.T.Y., Slater, M.: Stochastic ray tracing using SIMD processor arrays. The Visual Computer, bf 7 (1991) 187–199

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Green, S.A., Paddon, D.J.: Exploiting coherence for multiprocessor ray tracing. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, (1989) 12–27

    Google Scholar 

  8. Shen, L.S., Deprettere, E., Dewilde, P.: A new space partition technique to support a highly pipelined parallel architecture for the radiosity method. In Advances in Graphics Hardware V, proceedings Fifth Eurographics Workshop on Hardware. Springer-Verlag, (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Dippé, M.A.Z., Swensen J.: An adaptive subdivision algorithm and parallel architecture for realistic image synthesis. ACM Computer Graphics, 18 (1984) 149–158

    Google Scholar 

  10. Cleary, J.G., Wyvill, B.M., Birtwistle, G.M., Vatti, R.: Multiprocessor ray tracing. Computer Graphics Forum, (1986) 3–12

    Google Scholar 

  11. Kobayashi, H., Nishimura, S., Kubota, H., Nakamura, T., Shigei, Y.: Load balancing strategies for a parallel ray-tracing system based on constant subdivision. The Visual Computer, 4 (1988) 197–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Scherson, I.D., Caspary, C.: A self-balanced parallel ray-tracing algorithm. In P. M. Dew, R. A. Earnshaw, and T. R. Heywood, editors, Parallel Processing for Computer Vision and Display, Wokingham, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.4 (1988) 188–196

    Google Scholar 

  13. Jansen, F.W., Chalmers, A.: Realism in real time? In 4th EG Workshop on Rendering, (1993) 1–20

    Google Scholar 

  14. Reinhard, E., Jansen, F.W.: Rendering large scenes using parallel ray tracing. In A. Chalmers and F. W. Jansen, editors, First Eurographics Workshop on Parallel Graphics and Visualisation, Bristol, Alpha Books. (1996) 67–80

    Google Scholar 

  15. Geist, A., Beguelin, A., Dongarra, J., Jiang, W., Manchek, R., Sunderam, V.: PVM 3 User's Guide and Reference Manual. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, (1993) Included with the PVM 3 distribution.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK

    Erik Reinhard & Alan Chalmers

Authors
  1. Erik Reinhard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alan Chalmers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Marian Bubak Jack Dongarra Jerzy Waśniewski

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Reinhard, E., Chalmers, A. (1997). Message handling in parallel radiance. In: Bubak, M., Dongarra, J., Waśniewski, J. (eds) Recent Advances in Parallel Virtual Machine and Message Passing Interface. EuroPVM/MPI 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1332. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63697-8_121

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63697-8_121

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63697-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69629-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics