Parallel performance measures for volume ray casting
Claudio T. Silva, Arie E. Kaufman · 1994
We describeatechnique for achieving fast volume ray casting on parallel machines, using a load balancing scheme and an e#cient pipelined approach to compositing. We propose a new model for measuring the amount of work one needs to perform in order to render a given volume, and use this model to obtain a better load balancing scheme for distributed memory machines. We also discuss in detail the design tradeo #s of our technique. In order to validate our model we have implemented it on the Intel iPSC#860 and the Intel Paragon, and conducted a detailedperformance analysis. 1 Introduction As researchers and engineers use volume rendering to study complex physical and abstract structures they need a coherent, powerful, easy to use visualization tool, that lets them interactively change all the necessary parameters. Unfortunately,even with the latest volume rendering acceleration techniques running on top-of-the-line workstations, it still takes a few seconds to a few minutes to volume ren...