Scalable Graphics Architectures: Interface & Texture
Homan Igehy,
Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, May 2000.
Abstract:
With today's technology, it is possible to place a significant amount
graphics processing power on a single chip. While this allows computers to
render very impressive imagery, many interactive graphics applications
require several orders of magnitude more in processing power. Parallelism
is one way of achieving increased power, and scalable solutions achieve
parallelism through the replication of a basic unit. In this dissertation,
we discuss scalable graphics architectures and present novel techniques
for scaling two important aspects of graphics architectures that have not
been addressed by the literature: interface and texture.
First, we analyze parallelism in the graphics pipeline. By looking at the
virtual machine defined by the graphics API and analyzing its
dependencies, we are able to examine the sources of parallelism. We
define the metrics of scalability and analyze the extent to which existing
graphics architectures are able to scale. Second, we present a novel
parallel graphics interface that allows for scalable input rates. This
interface allows multiple graphics contexts to simultaneously submit
commands to the graphics system while explicitly ordering the drawing of
graphics primitives. Even with scenes that require a total order, fully
scalable submission and rendering are demonstrated. Finally, we present a
scalable texture architecture based on a shared texture memory. In order
to tolerate the high and variable latencies of a shared texture memory, a
novel texture prefetching architecture is described. The effects of
parallel texture caching are examined in detail, demonstrating the
applicability of such an approach across a wide variety of rasterization
architectures.
Dissertation:
homan@graphics.stanford.edu