Abstract
A new, parallel approach for generating Bresenham-type lines is developed. Coordinate pairs which approximate straight lines on a square grid are derived from line equations. These pairs serve as a basis for the development of four new parallel algorithms. One of the algorithms uses the fact that straight time generation is equivalent to a vector prefix sums calculation. The algorithms execute on a binary tree of processors. Each node in the tree performs a simple calculation that involves only additions and shifts. All four algorithms have time complexityO(log2 n) wheren in the form 2m denotes the number of points generated andn-1 is the number of processors in the tree. This compares toO(n) for Bresenham's algorithm executed on a sequential processor. Pipelining can be used to achieve a constant time per line generation as long as line length is less thann.
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Sosič, R., Riesenfeld, R.F. Parallel algorithms for line generation. Int J Parallel Prog 19, 389–404 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01407907
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01407907