UPI YPTK - Padang

Graphics Device System

Eko Syamsuddin Hasrito, PhD

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 Graphical System

5 major elements for a computer graphic

system
 Processor

 Memory

 Frame buffer

 Input devices

 Output Devices

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 Output Technology (1/3)

 Calligraphic Displays
 also called vector, stroke or line drawing
graphics
 lines drawn directly on phosphor

display processor directs electron beam according
to list of lines defined in a "display list“

phosphors glow for only a few micro-seconds so
lines must be redrawn or refreshed constantly

deflection speed limits # of lines that can be drawn
without flicker.

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 Output Technology (2/3)

 Raster Display
 Display primitives (lines, shaded regions,
characters) stored as pixels in refresh buffer
(or frame buffer)
 Electron beam scans a regular pattern of horiz
ontal raster lines connected by horizontal retrac
es and vertical retrace
 Video controller coordinates the repeated scan
ning
 Pixels are individual dots on a raster line

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 Output Technology (cont)

 Bitmap is the collection of pixels

 Frame buffer stores the bitmap
 Raster display store the display primitives (line, c
haracters, and solid shaded or patterned area)
 Frame buffers
 are composed of VRAM (video RAM).
 VRAM is dual-ported memory capable of
 Random access
 Simultaneous high-speed serial output: built-in serial
shift register can output entire scanline at high rate
synchronized to pixel clock.

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 Pros and Cons

 Advantages to Raster Displays

 lower cost
 filled regions/shaded images
 Disadvantages to Raster Displays
 a discrete representation, continuous primitives
must be scan-converted (i.e. fill in the
appropriate scan lines)
 Aliasing or "jaggies" Arises due to sampling
error when converting from a continuous to a
discrete representation

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 Basic Definitions

 Raster: A rectangular
array of points or dots.
 Pixel (Pel): One dot or
picture element of the
raster
 Scan line: A row of Video raster devices display
an image by sequentially
pixels drawing out the pixels of
the scan lines that form the
raster.

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 Resolution

 Maximum number of points that can be

displayed without overlap on a CRT monitor
 Dependent on
 Type of phosphor m

 Intensity to be displayed m

 Focusing and deflection systems m

 REL SGI O2 monitors: 1280 x 1024

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 Example
 Television
 NTSC 640x480x8b 1/4 MB
 GA-HDTV 1920x1080x8b ~2 MB
 Workstations
 Bitmapped display 960x1152x1b ~1 Mb
 Color workstation 1280x1024x24b 5 MB
 Laserprinters
 300 dpi (8.5”x300)(11”x300) 1.05 MB
 2400 dpi (8.5”x2400)(11”x2400) ~64 MB
 Film (line pairs/mm)
 35mm (diagonal) slide (ASA25~125 lp/mm) = 3000
3000 x 2000 x 3 x 12b ~27 MB

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 Aspect Ratio

Frame aspect ratio (FAR) = horizontal/vertical size

TV 4:3
HDTV 16:9
Page 8.5:11 ~ 3/4
35mm 3:2
Panavision 2.35:1 (2:1 anamorphic)
Vistavision 2.35:1 (1.5 anamorphic)

Pixel aspect ratio (PAR) = FAR vres/hres

Nuisance in graphics if not 1

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 Physical Size

 Physical size: Length of the screen

diagonal (typically 12 to 27 inches)
 REL SGI O2 monitors: 19 inches

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 Refresh Rates and Bandwidth

 Frames per second (FPS)

 Film (double framed) 24 FPS
 TV (interlaced) 30 FPS x 1/4 = 8 MB/s
 Workstation (non-interlaced) 75 FPS x 5 =
375 MB/s

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 Interlaced Scanning
 Scan frame 30 times per second
 To reduce flicker, divide frame into two fields—one
consisting of the even scan lines and the other of the odd
scan lines.
 Even and odd fields are scanned out alternately to
produce an interlaced image.

1/30 SEC 1/30 SEC

1/60 SEC 1/60 SEC 1/60 SEC 1/60 SEC

FIELD 1 FIELD 2 FIELD 1 FIELD 2

FRAME FRAME

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 Frame Buffer
 A frame buffer is
characterized by is size, x, y,
and pixel depth.
 the resolution of a frame
buffer is the number of pixels
in the display. e.g. 1024x1024
pixels.
 Bit Planes or Bit Depth is the Bilevel or monochrome displays have 1
number of bits corresponding bit/pixel (128Kbytes of RAM)
8bits/pixel -> 256 simultaneous colors
to each pixel. This determines 24bits/pixel -> 16 million simultaneous
the color resolution of the colors
buffer.

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 Specifying Color
8
 direct color :
 each pixel directly
8
specifies a color
value

e.g., 24bit : 8bits(R) 8 Red
+ 8bits(G) + 8
bits(B) Green
 palette-based color : Blue

indirect specification
 use palette (CLUT)

e.g., 8 bits pixel can 24 bits plane, 8 bits per color gun.
represent 256 colors 224 = 16,777,216

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 Lookup Tables
 Video controller often uses a lookup table to allow indirection of displ
ay values in frame buffer.

 Allows flexible use of colors without lots of frame-buffer memory.

 Allows change of display without remapping underlying data double
buffering.
 Permits simple animation.
 Common sizes: 8 x 12; 8 x 24; 12 x 24.

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 Color Look-Up Table

CLUT
Frame Buffer 0

127 127 2083 00000000 00000100 00010011

y
to red to green to blue
x gun gun gun
255

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 Pseudo Color

RED GREEN BLUE

255
254

256 colors chosen from a

palette of 16,777,216.

Each entry in the color map 3

2
LUT can be user defined.
1
0

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 Cathode Ray tube

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 Display Technology

 2D Displays  3D Displays
 CRT  Stereo presentation
 LCD (raster) (raster/vector)
 plasma screen (raster)
 Vibrating mirror (vector)
 Light valves (raster)
 Helical rotor (vector)
 Micromirror (raster)
 LED plate (raster)
 Projected laser (vector)
 Photoactive cube
 Direct laser (vector) (raster)
 Parabolic mirror (raster)

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 Display Technologies

 Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs)

 Most common display device today
 Evacuated glass bottle (last
of the vacuum tubes)
 Heating element (filament)
 Electrons pulled towards
anode focusing cylinder
 Vertical and horizontal deflection plates
 Beam strikes phosphor coating on front of tube

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 Display Technologies: CRTs

 Vector Displays
 First computer displays: basically an
oscilloscope
 Control X,Y with vertical/horizontal plate
voltage
 Often used intensity as Z
 Show: http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/classes/6.837/F98/Lecture1/Slide11.html
 Name two disadvantages

Just does wireframe

Display needs constant update to avoid fading

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 Vector Display Architecture

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 Display Technologies: CRTs

 Raster Displays
 Black and white television: an oscilloscope with a fixed
scan pattern: left to right, top to bottom
 Paint entire screen 30 times/sec

Actually, TVs paint top-to-bottom 60 times/sec, alternating
between even and odd scanlines

This is called interlacing. It’s a hack. Why do it?
 To paint the screen, computer needs to synchronize
with the scanning pattern of raster

Solution: special memory to buffer image with scan-out
synchronous to the raster. We call this the framebuffer.

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 Raster displays Architecture

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 Raster refresh

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 Comparing Raster and Vector (1/
2)

 advantages of vector:
 very fine detail of line drawings (sometimes curves), wh
ereas raster suffers from jagged edge problem due to p
ixels (aliasing, quantization errors)
 geometry objects (lines) whereas raster only handles pi
xels
 eg. 1000 line plot: vector disply computes 2000 endpoi
nts
 raster display computes all pixels on each line

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 Comparing Raster and Vector (2/
2)

 advantages of raster:
 cheaper
 colours, textures, realism
 unlimited complexity of picture: whatever you p
ut in refresh buffer, whereas vector complexity l
imited by refresh rate

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 Display Technology: Color CRTs

 Color CRTs are much more complicated

 Requires manufacturing very precise geometry
 Uses a pattern of color phosphors on the screen:

Delta electron gun arrangement In-line electron gun arrangement

http://www.udayton.edu/~cps/cps460/notes/displays/

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 Display Technology: Color CRTs

 Color CRTs have

 Three electron guns
 A metal shadow mask to differentiate the
beams

http://www.udayton.edu/~cps/cps460/notes/displays/

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 Display Technology: Raster

 CRT (raster) pros:

 Leverages low-cost CRT technology (i.e., TVs)
 Bright! Display emits light
 Cons:
 Requires screen-size memory array
 Discreet sampling (pixels)
 Practical limit on size (call it 40 inches)
 Bulky
 Finicky (convergence, warp, etc)
 X-ray radiation…

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 Display Technology: LCDs

 Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)

 LCDs: organic molecules, naturally in crystalline state,
that liquefy when excited by heat or E field
 Crystalline state twists polarized light 90º.

http://www.udayton.edu/~cps/cps460/notes/displays/

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 LCDs

 Transmissive & reflective LCDs:

 LCDs act as light valves, not light emitters, and thus rely on an
external light source.
 Laptop screen: backlit, transmissive display
 Palm Pilot/Game Boy: reflective display

http://www.udayton.edu/~cps/cps460/notes/displays/

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 Active-Matrix LCDs

 LCDs must be constantly refreshed, or they fade

back to their crystalline state
 Refresh applied in a raster-like scanning pattern
 Passive LCDs: short-burst refresh, followed by long
slow fade in which LCD is between On & Off
 Not very crisp, prone to ghosting
 Active matrix LCDs have a transistor and
capacitor at every cell
 FET transfers charge into capacitor during scan
 Capacitor easily holds charge till next refresh

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 Active Matrix LCDs Pros and
Cons
 Active-matrix pros: crisper with less ghosting,low
cost, low weight,flat, small size, low power consu
mption.
 Active-matrix cons: more expensive, small size, lo
w contrast, slow response
 Today, most things seem
to be active-matrix
More on Display
http://www.udayton.edu/~cps/cps460/notes/displays/

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 Plasma

 Plasma display panels

 Similar in principle to
fluorescent light tubes
 Small gas-filled capsules
are excited by electric field,
emits UV light
 UV excites phosphor
 Phosphor relaxes, emits
some other color

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 Plasma Display Panel Pros and
Cons

 Plasma Display Panel Pros

 Large viewing angle
 Good for large-format displays
 Fairly bright
 Cons
 Still very expensive
 Large pixels (~1 mm versus ~0.2 mm)
 Phosphors gradually deplete
 Less bright than CRTs, using more power

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 Display Technology: DMDs

 Digital Micromirror Devices (projectors)

 Microelectromechanical (MEM) devices,
fabricated with VLSI techniques

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 DMDs Pros and Cons

 DMDs are truly digital pixels

 Vary grey levels by modulating pulse length
 Color: multiple chips, or color-wheel
 Great resolution
 Very bright
 Flicker problems

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 FEDs

 Field Emission Devices (FEDs)

 Like a CRT, with many small
electron guns at each pixel
 Unreliable electrodes, needs vacuum
 Thin, but limited in size

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 Organic LED Arrays
 Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) Arrays
 The display of the future? Many think so.
 OLEDs function like regular semiconductor LEDs
 But with thin-film polymer construction:

Thin-film deposition or vacuum deposition process…not grown
like a crystal, no high-temperature doping

Thus, easier to create large-area OLEDs

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 Organic LED Arrays Pros and Cons

 OLED pros:
 Transparent
 Flexible
 Light-emitting, and quite bright (daylight visible)
 Large viewing angle
 Fast (< 1 microsecond off-on-off)
 Can be made large or small
 OLED cons:
 Not quite there yet (96x64 displays…)
 Not very robust, display lifetime a key issue

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 Traditional Input Device (1/4)

 Commonly used today

 Mouse-like devices
 mouse

 wheel mouse

 trackball

 Keyboards

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 Traditional Input Device (2/4)

 Pen-based devices
 pressure sensitive

 absolute positioning

 tablet computers


IPAQ, WinCE machines

Microsoft eTablet
coming soon
 palm-top devices


Handspring Visor,
PalmOS™

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 Traditional Input Device (3/4)

 Joysticks
 game pads

 flightsticks

 Touchscreens

 Microphones
 wireless vs. wired

 headset

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 Traditional Input Device (4/4)

 Digital still and video

cameras, scanners
 MIDI devices
 input from electronic

musical instruments
 more convenient

than entering scores

with just a
mouse/keyboard

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 3D Input Device (1/2)

 Electromagnetic trackers
 can be attached to any head, hands, joints,

objects
 Polhemus FASTRAK™(used in Brown’s Cave)

 Acoustic-inertial trackers
 Intersense IS-900

http://www.polhemus.com/ftrakds.htm http://www.isense.com/products/prec/is900/index.htm

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 3D Input Device (2/2)

 Gloves
 attach electromagnetic tracker to the hand
 Pinch gloves
 contact between digits is a “pinch” gesture
 in CAVE, extended Fakespace PINCH™
gloves with extra contacts

http://www.fakespacelabs.com/products/pinch.html

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 Video Output Devices (1/4)

 Classification
 Stereo

head-mounted displays

shutter glasses
 Degree of immersion
http://robotics.aist-nara.ac.jp/equipments/E-

conventional desktop equips/hmd.html
screen

walkup VR, semi-
immersive displays
immersive virtual reality
http://www.virtualresearch.com/index.html
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 Video Output Devices (2/4)

Example of Immersive
Display
 Diffusion Tensor MRI
Brain Visualization at
Brown University

http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/graphics/research/sciviz/brain/brain.htm

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 Video Output Devices (3/4)

 Desktop
 Vector display
 CRT
 LCD flatpanel
 workstation displays(Sun Lab)
 PC and Mac laptops
 Tablet computers
 Wacom’s display tablet http://www.wacom.com/productinfo/index.cfm

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 Video Output Devices (4/4)

 Immersive
 Head-mounted displays (HMD)
 Stereo shutter glasses
 Virtual Retinal Display (VRD)
 CAVE™

http://www.evl.uic.edu/research/template_res_project.php3?indi=27
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 Interactive Input Devices

 A graphics work station commonly has one or two

monitors and a range of input devices. These can
include:
Keyboard
May be customized to application.
Can include dials, joysticks.
Other device
Graphics tablet Mouse
Light pen Joystick
Button devices Dials and levers
3D locators Touch panels
Voice Input Scanners

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 Hard Copy Devices

 Printers
 Non-Impact printers --- Ink jet; laser;
 Xerographic;
 Electrostatic;
 Dye sublimation.
 Plotters
 Flatbed, Beltbed
 Multiple pens available
 Plotter `languages’
 Built in character sets, line styles etc.

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 Hardcopy Technologies

 Basically printing on paper, film etc. Some genera

l issues are:
 The resolution of a device is the closest spacing at whi
ch adjacent black and white lines can be distinguished.
 Many devices work by producing (colored) dots, and im
age quality vs. dot size or spot size is an issue.
 Resolution can be no greater than addressability (lines
per inch) and depends on spot size also on intensity dis
tribution across spot.
 Many devices can create only a few solid colors. Other
colors must be produced by dither patterns.

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 Raster Scan Display Systems

 The various hardware architectures for providing

graphics functionality differ on two axes
 Processing performed by specialized graphics hardwar
e.

Simplest has only video controller.

More complex systems use a graphics display processor with
varying functionality.
 Relationship of frame buffer to CPU memory architectu
re.
 Dual ported
 Accessible only to graphics controller
 Accessible only over main bus

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 Video Controller

Problems with memory access { 50 ns pixel time (480 x 640 x 60

Hz) is shorter than typical 200 ns RAM cycle time.
- Must fetch multiple pixels per access.
- Can eat up a lot of memory bandwidth.
- Can eat up a lot of main bus bandwidth if so organized.

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 Simple Raster systems (1/2)

 No special graphics proce

ssing except video controll
er. Two basic frame-buffer
mappings.
 Single ported frame buffer
 Passes video information
over system bus.
 Simple and flexible.
 Problems with bus conges
tion.
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 Simple Raster systems (2/2)

 Dual ported frame buff

er:
 Frame buffer in special
, dual ported Video RA
M.
 Unloads bus.
 More expensive.
 Less exible.

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 Systems with video processors (
1/3)

 Makes sense to put special-purpose hardware clo

se to video (speed, expense)
 May do various scan conversion algorithms, pix m
oves, windowing, sometimes rotation of existing p
rimitives
 Commands such as Text, Move, Line, Polygon...
 3D stuff as well - hidden surface removal, shading
, texture mapping.
 Various architectures.

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 Systems with video processors (
2/3)

 Graphics processor h
as its local memory a
nd manages the fram
e buffer and specializ
ed graphics program
s.

 Typical architecture f
or "plug in" graphics
cards.

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 Systems with video processors (
3/3)

 Graphics processor is controlled via an instruction

queue.
 All data transferred between host memory and co
processor memory must go through both CPU
 Unimplemented algorithms may be slow, since ho
st machine has no direct access to the frame buff
er.
 May be considerable communication overhead if
coprocessor instruction registers are not memory
mapped.

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 Example: Voodoo

 Voodoo chipset manufactured by 3Dfx, Inc.

 3D-only graphics chipset.
 Card manufacturers would build cards
around Voodoo chip
 Came out in 1996 ... probably first
consumer-level 3D accelerator.
 Combined hardware (Voodoo chip) and
software (Direct3D/OpenGL/Glide) solution.

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 Voodoo hardware

 Features:
 Filled 45 Million pixels/s; 1 million triangles/s
 Hardware z buffer (16-bit).
 Perspective corrected Gouraud-shaded
texture-mapped triangles done in hardware.
 Alpha blending (allows transparency)
 Software provided polygons, normals and
textures, and did all the geometry
(modelling, viewing) and lighting itself.

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 Example: GeForce 256

 Released in 1999.
 One chip solution; 2D and 3D support. 2D
includes MPEG-2 (DVD) decoder.
 RAM from 32MB-128MB
 GeForce GPU (graphics processing unit)
has 23 million transistors ... more than Intel
PIII.

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 Hardware features (1/2)

 Still unique for PC board in that it does

transformation and lighting in hardware.
Means more CPU for game physics etc.
 4-stage pipeline:
 Transformation
 Lighting
 Triangle setup & clipping
 Rasterisation
 4 pipelines (16 units).

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 Hardware features (2/2)

 Hardware support for:

 Phong shaded texture-mapped polygons
 Bump mapping
 Cube environment mapping
 480 Mpixels/s, 15 million polygon/s.
 Extremely fast.
 http://www.nvidia.com. Some very nice
white papers on T & L and cube
enviromapping.

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 GeForce 3

 57 million transistor chip (Pentium 4 is ~40

million)
 Released in April 2001.
 Programmability means it's really another
computer within your computer.
 Graphics hardware is moving at 3x Moore's
Law.

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 Render farms
 Closely related to Beowulf
clusters
 Idea: Use many tightly-
coupled off-the-shelf
machines to do rendering
 Problem: Dividing the work
 But sometimes easy, e.g. one
frame per machine
 Example: Titanic water effects
used cluster of about 160
Alphas running Linux/NT.

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 Source :

Pradondet Nilagupta
Dept. of Computer Engineering
Kasetsart University

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