Portable Parallel Ray Tracing Algorithms

Abstract

For a variety of reasons, realistic computer rendering is an important technology; it creates a wide range of new possibilities for effectively communicating information. The crucial goal is to provide realistic images in a short period of time. Ray tracing is a powerful technique for rendering. It is conceptually simple, and can produce effects beyond the capability of some other more traditional methods. Unfortunately, ray tracing is rather expensive by comparison. This project is aimed at producing a reasonably fast and efficient ray tracer based on parallel ray tracing algorithms. The code is written in NESL, a data-parallel language developed by Guy Blelloch. It is supported on Cray YMP, Connection Machine CNI-2, and serial workstation platforms.... Realistic rendering, Ray tracing, Parallel ray tracing.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA268984

Entities

People

  • Michael J. Garland

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computations
  • Computer Graphics
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Simulations
  • Computers
  • Fish
  • Illumination
  • Images
  • Language
  • Light Sources
  • Optical Phenomena
  • Parallel Computing
  • Ray Tracing
  • Reflection
  • Reflectivity
  • Simulations

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Wave Propagation and Nonlinear Chaotic Dynamics.