Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!arisia!sgi!shinobu!odin!krypton!gavin
From: gavin@krypton.sgi.com (Gavin A. Bell)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Raytracer performance on machines?
Message-ID: <665@odin.SGI.COM>
Date: 22 Sep 89 06:33:45 GMT
References: <6224@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: news@odin.SGI.COM
Lines: 19

pkh@vap.vi.ri.cmu.edu (Ping Kang Hsiung) writes:
>Does anyone have a collection of performance (timing) data based 
>on running a raytracer (preferablly a publicly available raytracer, 
>e.g. mtv or qrt) on various machines? 

I believe that the BRL-CAD ray-tracer is sometimes used as a standard
benchmark (with specific input files).  A number is generated which
they call the 'Ray-tracing figure of merit'; the higher the number,
the better.  The whole BRL-CAD package is public domain, but big,
crufty, and pretty ancient as ray-tracing packages go.

I know all this because I'm in the Demo/Benchmarks group here at
Silicon Graphics, and this ray-tracing benchmark is one of the few in
which our 4D/280 outperformed a Cray (ray-tracing being an easily
multi-processed, but not vectorizable, application).

If people are intersted, I could send them the results.

--gavin (Not an Official Spokesperson for anything)