Solving the Hazard Problem for Algorithmically Optimized Real-Time Volume Rendering

B. Vettermann, J. Hesser, R. M nnerLehrstuhl f r Informatik V, Universit t MannheimB,6 D-68131 Mannheim GermanyAbstractOne of the most difficult problems in volume rendering hardwarearchitectures is to provide an efficient hardware integration ofalgorithmic optimization techniques like, space leaping and earlyray termination. An architecture, which solves this problem, ispresented in this paper. It is based on a multithreaded approachthat overcomes branch hazards caused by these algorithmicoptimization techniques. Additionally, a new memory architecturesuitable for the multithreaded processing of rays is presented.Simulations show efficiencies of up to 97% (only 3% idle time)for the full system. A frame rate of 132 Hz for a data set of256 256 128 and up to 4 Hz for 1024

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