Publisher's Synopsis
The distributed memory multiprocessor is currently viewed as perhaps the most practical means of achieving large-scale parallelism from general purpose computer systems. The construction of powerful multiprocessors has been facilitiated by the arrival of VLSI devices, attractive for their low cost per processor, and the ease with which networks may be expanded.;One major use of computing resources which lends itself well to the application of parallel processing is in computer graphics. Of all the computer graphics techniques, those which are used for the synthesis of photo-realistic images are the most computationally demanding. One such technique, called ray tracing, is well suited for executing on distributed memory multiprocessor systems.;The widespread use of distributed memory multiprocessors has been slow to appear, the most significant reason for this being that they are believed by many to be inherently difficult to program. This book considers carefully the design of a multiprocessor solution for the ray tracing problem. Particular emphasis is placed upon establishing a general purpose approach, so that the techniques developed may be applied to other problems. The areas of difficulty of programming distributed memory multiprocessors are identified in the hope that they may be set apart from the functions of a ray tracing program, with the intention of simplifying the role of the application programmer.;The design of a multiprocessor solution for ray tracing is shown to revolve around two distinct functions, namely task management (allocation of processing to processors) and data management (distribution of data amongst the processors). A close marriage between the schemes for these management functions is necessary to enable an efficient implementation. Techniques are described for each of these functions and experimental results are presented using a set of standard graphics environments.
