Brian Apgar
Abstract
This paper describes a high performance display system that has been incorporated into the overall architecture of the Stellar Graphics Supercomputer Model GS1000. The display system is tightly coupled to the CPU, memory system and vector processing unit of this supercomputer, and is capable of rendering 150,000 shaded triangles/sec, and 600,000 short vectors/sec. The goal of the architecture is to share hardware resources between the CPU and display system and achieve a high bandwidth connection between them. This coupling of the display system and the processor, the architecture of the rendering processor, and the two ASICs that are used to implement the rendering processor are described.In addition, the display system architecture is contrasted to other approaches to high performance graphics, and design trade-offs and possible extensions are described. The implementation of popular display algorithms on the architecture is discussed, and their performance specified. The reader is advised that Stellar Computer Inc. is seeking patent protection for work described in this paper.
- 1 Baskett, Forest, Tom Jermoluk, Doug Solomon. The 4D-MP Graphics Superworkstation: Computing + Graphics = 40 MIPS + 40 MFLOPS and 100,000 Lighted Polygons per Second. Digest of papers COMPCOM '88 (San Francisco, California, February 29 - March 4 1988) pp. 468-471Google Scholar
- 2 Bishop, Gary and David Weimer, Fast Phong Shading. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH'86 ( Dallas, Texas, August 18-22). In Computer Graphics 20, 4 (August 1986) pp. 103-106 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 3 Bresenham, Jack. Algorithm for Computer Control of Digital Plotter. IBM System Journal 4, 1 (1965)Google Scholar
- 4 Carpenter, Loren. The A-buffer, an Antialiased Hidden Surface Method. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH'84 (Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 23-27). In Computer Graphics 18, 3 (July 1984) pp. 103-108 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 5 Clark, Jim. The Geometry Engine: A VLSI Geometry System for Graphics. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH'82 (Boston, Massachusetts, July 26-30). In Computer Graphics 16, 3 (July 1982) pp. 127-133 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 6 Clark, Jim. and M. Hannah. Distributed Processing in a High Performance Smart Image Memory. LAMBDA 4th Quarter, 1980. pp. 40-45Google Scholar
- 7 England, Nick. A Graphics System Architecture for Interactive Application Specific Display Functions. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 6, 1 (January 1986)pp. 60-70 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 8 Fuchs, Henry and John Poulton. Pixel-planes: A VLSI-Oriented Design for a Raster Graphics Engine. VLSI Design 2, 3 3rd quarter 1981, pp. 20-28.Google Scholar
- 9 Fuchs, Henry, Jack Gotdfeather, Jeff Hulquist, Susan Spach, John Austin, Frederick Brooks, John Eyles, and John Poulton. Fast Spheres, Shadows, Textures , Transparencies, and Image Enhancements in Pixel-planes. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH'85 (San Francisco, California July 22-26). In Computer Graphics 19, 3 (July 1985)pp. 111-120 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 10 Goldfeather, Jack, Jeff Hulquist, and Henry Fuchs. Past Constructive Solid Geometry Display in the Pixel-Powers Graphics System. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH'86 (Dallas, Texas, August 18- 22). In Computer Graphics 20,4 (August 1986) pp. 107-116 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 11 Goris, Andy, B. Fredrickson, H. Baeverstad Jr., "A Configurable Pixel Cache for Fast Image Generation", Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 7, No. 3 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 12 Gouraud, H. "Computer Display of Carved Surfaces" Dept. of Computer Seience, U. of Utah, UTEC-CSc-71-113, June 1971Google Scholar
- 13 "GRAPHICON 700 Specifications", A marketing specification sheet from General Electric Company, Silicon Systems Technology Department, P.O. Box 13049 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709Google Scholar
- 14 Levinthal, Adam and Thomas Porter. Chap - A SIMD Graphics Processor. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH'84 (Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 23-27). In Computer Graphics 18, 3 (July 1984) pp. 77-82 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 15 McCormick, Bruce,Thomas DeFanti, Maxine Brown editors. Visualization in Scientific Computing. Siggraph Computer Graphics newsletter 21, 5 (October 1987)Google Scholar
- 16 Phong, Bui Tuong. Illumination for Computer Generated Pictures. Communications of the ACM18, 6 (June 1975) pp. 311- 317 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 17 Sporer Michael, Franklin Moss, and Craig Mathias. An Introduction to the Architecture of the Stellar Graphics Supercomputer. Digest of papers COMPCOM '88 (San Francisco, California, February 29 - March 4 1988) pp. 464-467Google Scholar
- 18 Swanson, Roger and Larry Thayer. A Fast Shaded-Polygon Renderer. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH'86 ( Dallas, Texas, August 18- 22). In Computer Graphics 20, 4 (August 1986) pp. 95-101 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 19 Torborg, John. A Parallel Processor Architecture for Graphics Arithmetic Operations. Proceedings Of SIGGRAPH'87 (Anaheim, California, July 27-31). In Computer Graphics 21, 4 (July 1987) pp. 197-204 Google ScholarDigital Library
- 20 Williams, Lance. Casting Curved Shadows on Curved Surfaces. In Computer Graphics 12, 2 (1978) pp.270-274 Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- A display system for the Stellar graphics supercomputer model GS1000
Recommendations
A display system for the Stellar graphics supercomputer model GS1000
SIGGRAPH '88: Proceedings of the 15th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniquesThis paper describes a high performance display system that has been incorporated into the overall architecture of the Stellar Graphics Supercomputer Model GS1000. The display system is tightly coupled to the CPU, memory system and vector processing ...
Graphics Processing on a Graphics Supercomputer
A description is given of the Titan Graphics Supercomputer. The primary design philosophy was to have as little redundant hardware as possible and to make as much of the hardware available to compiled application code as possible. This led to a design ...
An improved illumination model for shaded display
To accurately render a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional scene, global illumination information that affects the intensity of each pixel of the image must be known at the time the intensity is calculated. In a simplified form, this ...
Comments