Data parallelism for ray casting large scenes on a cpu-gpu cluster

Download
index.pdf
2008
Topcu, Tümer
Show full item record
141
views
92
downloads
In the last decade, computational power, memory bandwidth and programmability capabilities of graphics processing units (GPU) have rapidly evolved. Therefore, many researches have been performed to use GPUs in advanced graphics rendering. Because of its high degree of parallelism, ray tracing has been one of the rst algorithms studied on GPUs. However, the rendering of large scenes with ray tracing can easily exceed the GPU's memory capacity. The algorithm proposed in this work uses a data parallel approach where the scene is partitioned and assigned to CPU-GPU couples in a cluster to overcome this problem. Our algorithm focuses on ray casting which is a special case of ray tracing mainly used in visualization of volumetric data. CPUs are pretty e cient in ow control and branching while GPUs are very fast performing intense oating point operations. Using these facts, the GPUs in the cluster are assigned the task of performing ray casting while the CPUs are responsible for traversing the rays. In the end, we were able to visualize large scenes successfully by utilizing CPU-GPU couples e ectively and observed that the performance is highly dependent on the viewing angle as a result of load imbalance.
Computer engineering., Computer Hardware.
http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12609494/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/18229
Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

Automatic eye tracking and intermediate view reconstruction for 3D imaging systems
Bediz, Yusuf; Akar, Gözde; Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (2006)
In recent years, the utilization of 3D display systems became popular in many application areas. One of the most important issues in the utilization of these systems is to render the correct view to the observer based on his/her position. In this thesis, we propose and implement a single user view rendering system for autostereoscopic/stereoscopic displays. The system can easily be installed on a standard PC together with an autostereoscopic display or stereoscopic glasses (shutter, polarized, pulfrich, and...
Texture mapping by multi-image blending for 3D face models
Bayar, Hakan; Ulusoy, İlkay; Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (2007)
Computer interfaces has changed to 3D graphics environments due to its high number of applications ranging from scientific importance to entertainment. To enhance the realism of the 3D models, an established rendering technique, texture mapping, is used. In computer vision, a way to generate this texture is to combine extracted parts of multiple images of real objects and it is the topic studied in this thesis. While the 3D face model is obtained by using 3D scanner, the texture to cover the model is constr...
Parallel implementation of the finite element method on graphics processors for the solution of incompressible flows
Göçmen, Mahmut Murat; Sert, Cüneyt; Department of Mechanical Engineering (2014)
In recent years clock speeds and memory bandwidths of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) increased dramatically compared to CPUs. Also GPU vendors developed and freely released new programming tools to make scientific computing on GPUs easier. With these recent developments the use of GPUs for general purpose computing becomes a popular research field. Researchers previously demonstrated that use of GPUs may provide tens of times of speeds-ups compared to CPU solvers for CFD methods such as Smoothed Particle ...
Accelerated regular grid traversals using extended anisotropic chessboard distance fields on a parallel stream processor
Es, Alphan; İşler, Veysi (Elsevier BV, 2007-11-01)
Modern graphics processing units (GPUs) are an implementation of parallel stream processors. In recent years, there have been a few studies on mapping ray tracing to the GPU. Since graphics processors are not designed to process complex data structures, it is crucial to explore data structures and algorithms for efficient stream processing. In particular ray traversal is one of the major bottlenecks in ray tracing and direct volume rendering methods. In this work we focus on the efficient regular grid based...
SystemC implementation with analog mixed signal modeling for a microcontroller
Mert, Yakup Murat; Aşkar, Murat; Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (2007)
In this thesis, an 8-bit microcontroller, PIC 16F871, has been implemented using SystemC with classical hardware design methods. Analog modules of the microcontroller have been modeled behaviorally with SystemC-AMS which is the analog and mixed signal extensions for the SystemC. SystemC-AMS provides the capability to model non-digital modules and synchronization with the SystemC kernel. In this manner, electronic systems that have both digital and analog components can be described and simulated very effect...
Citation Formats
T. Topcu, “Data parallelism for ray casting large scenes on a cpu-gpu cluster,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2008.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr