A parallel system for photo realistic artificial scene rendering

Abstract

We present a parallel system for fast rendering of artificial scenes with photo realism. The underlying parallel algorithm is based on ray-tracing and radiosity shading. The system consists of a standard workstation, a medium-size mesh of cluster processors and a high-bandwidth interconnection between them. Each cluster processor consists of a programmable TMS320C40 core and three dedicated VLSI satellites. The rendering algorithm runs on both the workstation host and its rendering mate in a true shared/distributed manner. The system is the result of an exercise in combined algorithm and architecture design as well as software/hardware co-design.