CAREER: A systems approach to real-time graphics on single-chip highly-programmable hardware

在单片高度可编程硬件上实现实时图形的系统方法。马克，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校这个项目的目标是产生更好的交互式3D图形--也就是说，合成与真实的世界无法区分的图像，并足够快地生成这些图像，以便用户可以与计算机生成的世界进行交互。 现实的计算机生成的图像需要的应用程序，如紧急和军事训练，电子商务，教育和娱乐。虽然实时三维图形技术在过去的二十年里有了很大的进步，但是从今天的系统中得到的图像仍然不是完全真实的，并且由于今天的系统中使用的技术的基本限制，真实感的目标实际上是用当前的系统设计无法达到的。软件和硬件的基础系统设计，克服了当前的限制，实现了逼真的实时图形。 新系统是围绕光线跟踪可见性算法组织的，该算法不受使用Z缓冲区的限制。 光线跟踪传统上被认为是不切实际的实时系统，因为以前的方法已经无法有效地支持动态和可变形的对象，需要由大多数应用程序。 新系统通过一种新颖的光线跟踪方法克服了这一限制，该方法集成了先前分离的系统的两个部分：场景管理和可见性计算。 反过来，这种紧密集成要求将当今系统的两部分硬件架构（中央处理器（CPU）+图形）替换为单一的统一硬件架构。 这种新的硬件架构将当今图形处理器的并行性与当今CPU的灵活编程模型相结合。 这种新的硬件架构还具有为3D图形以外的各种应用提供更好性能的潜力。 在这项研究的同时，研究人员正在培训学生和其他研究人员了解如何设计和分析这种新型系统。

AbstractCAREER: A systems approach to real-time graphics on single-chip highly-programmable hardwareWilliam R. Mark, University of Texas at Austin The goal of this project is to produce better interactive 3D graphics -- that is, to synthesize images that are indistinguishable from the real world and to generate these images rapidly enough that users can interact with the computer-generated world. Realistic computer-generated images are needed by applications such as emergency and military training, e-commerce, education, and entertainment. Although real-time 3D graphics technology has improved enormously over the past twenty years, the images from today's systems are still not fully realistic, and the goal of realism is in fact unattainable with current system designs due to fundamental limitations of thetechnology used in today's systems.This research is exploring a new, ground-up system design for both software and hardware that overcomes current limitations to enable realistic real-time graphics. The new system is organized around the ray tracing visibility algorithm, which does not suffer from the limitations imposed by using the Z-buffer. Ray tracing has traditionally been considered impractical for real-time systems because previous approaches have been unable to efficiently support dynamic and deformable objects that are needed by most applications. The new system overcomes this restriction with a novel approach to ray tracing that integrates the two parts of the system that were previously separated: scene management and visibility computations. In turn, this tight integration requires that the two-part hardware architecture of today's systems (the central processing unit (CPU)+graphics) be replaced with a single, unified hardware architecture. This new hardware architecture combines the parallelism of today's graphics processors with the flexible programming model of today's CPUs. This new hardware architecture also has the potential to provide better performance for a wide variety of applications beyond 3D graphics. In conjunction with this research, the investigator is training students and other researchers to understand how to design and analyze this new type of system.