Hardware acceleration for raytracing purposes
Svjatoslav Lisin
How much can it cost?
john jakson
> Does somebody know any ready hardware systems for raytracing acceleration ?
> How much can it cost?
Doesn't nVidia, ATI, etc have this problem licked to death. Buy the
latest nVidia card for PC, and that should do several orders better
than anything else you could build yourself.
JJ
Ken
Video cards don't support hardware acceleration for raytracing. OpenGL,
movies and simple shading of polygons, yes, raytracing no.
--
Ken Tyler
Jason Sewall
I'm not really aware of the specifics of the newer cards, but if you
were willing to get your hands dirty, I bet you could convince a Geforce
3+ to do some work for you in pre-processing/animation work. (I'm
referring to the vertex pipeline/transformation instructions.)
It's probably not worth it, though.
Jason
Mark Williams
> Does somebody know any ready hardware systems for raytracing acceleration ?
> How much can it cost?
Hi, take a look at RenderDrive & PURE on www.artvps.com
Best regards,
Mark
Matt Giwer
> Does somebody know any ready hardware systems for raytracing acceleration ?
> How much can it cost?
Zip. Nothing. No graphics card can speed up raytracing, period.
A graphics card speeds up the display if the program calls its built in
primitives. Rendering programs do not call those primitives but rather
are CPU intensive calculations of each pixel.
--
2003 March 14: Israel murders eleven Palestinians.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2576
Leon Heller
"Matt Giwer" <jul...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
news:7wvma.147196$j8.32...@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
> Svjatoslav Lisin wrote:
> > Does somebody know any ready hardware systems for raytracing
acceleration ?
> > How much can it cost?
>
> Zip. Nothing. No graphics card can speed up raytracing, period.
>
> A graphics card speeds up the display if the program calls its built in
> primitives. Rendering programs do not call those primitives but rather
> are CPU intensive calculations of each pixel.
Parallel processing is the best way to do ray-tracing. Transputers used to
be very good at it.
Leon
--
Leon Heller, G1HSM
leon_...@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller
Svjatoslav Lisin
> A graphics card speeds up the display if the program calls its built in
> primitives. Rendering programs do not call those primitives but rather
> are CPU intensive calculations of each pixel.
I didn't mean video card with 3D-Studio like program as a ready solution.
I'm interested in ready system-on-chip which can accelerate the raytracing
process. Software part (drivers, program like 3DS and so on) I can write by
oneself.
Svjatoslav Lisin
this is very huge box with lot of electronics :(
Luc Claustres
Matt Giwer
That is the point. The CPU is the chip that does all the work. A faster
CPU (with compatible motherboard and chipset and all) is the only way to
speed up things.
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not 60,000 and not 100,000 nor by Iraq.
The Iron Webmaster, 2604
Matt Giwer
> "Matt Giwer" <jul...@tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:7wvma.147196$j8.32...@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
>
>>Svjatoslav Lisin wrote:
>>
>>>Does somebody know any ready hardware systems for raytracing
>> acceleration ?
>>>How much can it cost?
>>
>>Zip. Nothing. No graphics card can speed up raytracing, period.
>>
>>A graphics card speeds up the display if the program calls its built in
>>primitives. Rendering programs do not call those primitives but rather
>>are CPU intensive calculations of each pixel.
>
> Parallel processing is the best way to do ray-tracing. Transputers used to
> be very good at it.
I've connected my older computers into a LAN. I've been parcelling out
frames for animations with very worth-the-effort improvements. I've been
considering an actual cluster but haven't worked out how to make it work
with povray yet. I can automatically parcel out rows by cpu speed but I
haven't dug into cleanly reassembling them to a single image. I can do
that without a cluster.
--
Those who think and question are the minority, those who do not
the majority. Directing propaganda at those who think and question
can at best gain 100% of the minority. It is best to target
the majority.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2607
mpbetts
Then you could do someting like start up a bunch of processes to render
each scanline, and then OpenMosix would move these processes out to the
other computers automatically.
-Buddy
Matt Giwer
> If you're using Linux, OpenMosix is some good load balancing software..
> Then you could do someting like start up a bunch of processes to render
> each scanline, and then OpenMosix would move these processes out to the
> other computers automatically.
Yes but for a single image ...
With povray I can manually have it render an X by Y section. Most
easily X rows per computer based upon clock speed. I know of no way to
parcel out the rows automatically without rewriting the povray source
and of course learning how to do that.
Even then, each processor would create an output file in the chosen
format with all the right headers. So they would have to be processed to
reassemble instead of simply concatenating them. Ideally instead of each
processor writing to its own file it would send the results to one
computer which would then create a single output file. That would be
another interesting rewrite.
That is why so far I have only addressed the trivial issue of
animations where the number of frames is assigned by clock speed.
> On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Matt Giwer wrote:
>
>
>> I've connected my older computers into a LAN. I've been parcelling out
>>frames for animations with very worth-the-effort improvements. I've been
>>considering an actual cluster but haven't worked out how to make it work
>>with povray yet. I can automatically parcel out rows by cpu speed but I
>>haven't dug into cleanly reassembling them to a single image. I can do
>>that without a cluster.
>>
>>--
>>Those who think and question are the minority, those who do not
>>the majority. Directing propaganda at those who think and question
>>can at best gain 100% of the minority. It is best to target
>>the majority.
>> -- The Iron Webmaster, 2607
>>
>>
>
>
--
After Iraq is disarmed the US will leave, right?
-- The Iron Webmaster, 2596
HyperOnyx
hardware raytracing. Go to graphics.cs.uiuc.edu and you can see a project
where they are using videa cards to do some raytracing, but it's ceratinly
not real time. You would have to program in Cg and write your own
raytracing code for the video card. And again, it won't be real time. They
would have notes on the time you can perhaps get from it.
An the side, I have this link to a drive you can buy which accelerates the
renderman sahding. I don't know much about it, but you can take a look.
http://www.id8media.com/accelerators_products/render_drive_features.html
hope that helps.
Dieter
--
Dieter Van Wassenhove
"Svjatoslav Lisin" <netbre...@mail.ru> wrote in message
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stefkeB
"Svjatoslav Lisin" <netbre...@mail.ru> wrote in message
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wicked...@trioptimum.com
>
> Even then, each processor would create an output file in the chosen
> format with all the right headers. So they would have to be processed to
> reassemble instead of simply concatenating them. Ideally instead of each
> processor writing to its own file it would send the results to one
> computer which would then create a single output file. That would be
> another interesting rewrite.
>
> That is why so far I have only addressed the trivial issue of
> animations where the number of frames is assigned by clock speed.
>
I'm writing my own raytracer that does this (although by no means POV-Ray
quality, I don't have much up right now). My idea is to dole out bunches of
rays to each proc (or maybe specify a light and have each proc produce
rays), and after that all the reflected rays are split up and redistributed
according to how fast each proc is (by a simple benchmark, maybe rays/sec or
something).