CellFlow: A Parallel Rendering Scheme for Distributed Memory Architectures

We present the CellFlow method for object space subdivision that exploits frame coherency to implement a look-ahead scheme of object dataflow. The implementation of this scheme exploits the communication features of modern scalable multicomputers to achieve near linear speedup by means of latency hiding. We demonstrate the performance of our approach in the field of volume rendering by implementing incremental rotation of the volumetric object about its center. The simplicity of the algorithm, its optimal embedding in popular network topologies, and minimal congestionfree communication among processors are its main advantages. Results are shown for implementation on the Cray T3D, a distributed memory 3D torus architecture. Computation and communication load balancing issues among processors are also addressed.

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