Viewing and Rendering Processor for a Volume Visualization System

Abstract

The architecture and the hardware realization of the 3D Viewing and Rendering Processor is presented. This processor is a component of the Cube architecture, developed primarily for volume visualization. The processor generates 2D shaded orthographic, parallel, and perspective projections of the volumetric image of n3 voxels in O(n2log n) time. This performance is attributed to a unique skewed memory organization, a special ray projection bus, an extended viewing architecture, and a new congradient shading technique. A reduced-resolution prototype has been realized in hardware using printed circuit board technology and has been running in true real time. Currently, a VLSI version of the prototype is being tested.