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From: pearce@calgary.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.graphics
Subject: any multi-processor ray tracing?
Message-ID: <249@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Jul-86 05:11:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: vaxb.249
Posted: Wed Jul  9 05:11:13 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jul-86 22:49:09 EDT
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.
Lines: 31
Keywords: ray tracing, multi-processing, mesh

Does anyone out there know of any research into multi-processor ray tracing?

I know of the LINKS hardware in Japan, Micheal Ullner's thesis, Dippe and
Swensen's SIGGRAPH paper, Apollo's "Long ray's journey into light" (but have
not seen anything written about this), Fujimoto's "ARTS" in CG&A, and, of
course, what John Cleary and I are doing here. But I've not heard of
anyone else.

Although any information would be greatly appreciated, I'm not interested
so much in vectorization or pipelining the algorithm as in arrays of
processors running identical code with differing data spaces.

For example, while simply dividing the screen into sub-sections and having each
sub-section assigned to a distinct processor with global scene space knowledge
is multi-processing, the processors in such a case do not require
inter-processor communication durring the ray tracing procedure.

Any discussion on the matter would be welcome as well.


	Andrew Pearce
	Dept. Computer Science,
	The University of Calgary,
	2500 University Dr. N. W.
	Calgary, Alberta,
	CANADA T2N 1N4.

	Ph. (403)220-3536
	Usenet: ...{ubc-vision,ihnp4}!alberta!calgary!pearce

[and thanks to all who responded to my request for the Rubin&Whitted paper]