ITR/SI: Design and Implementation of a Graphics Supercomputer from Commodity Components

该项目将设计并实现一个分布式渲染平台，该平台由现成的商品组件组成，但可以大规模地提供实时真实感。这个并行渲染系统的灵感来自普林斯顿大学最近建立的一个类似系统。对这项工作提出的扩展包括在规模上的显著扩展，新的任务调度算法，一种新的集成网络设计，将分布式Linux系统中的显卡驱动程序连接到网络接口卡驱动程序，以及凯勒技术的扩展，称为即时辐射，以提供实时的全局照明。该平台的设计和实现应该为计算机科学专业的研究生提供设计用于分布式处理的大规模系统的宝贵实践经验。由此产生的平台应该作为包括NSF ERC小组在内的几个小组的有价值的研究工具，该小组将使用可视化来探索新纤维和薄膜的产品和工艺设计。这个项目构建的广泛可用的开放软件系统的支持代码扩展将在Internet上免费提供。

This project will design and implement a distributed rendering platform that consists of off-the-shelf commodity components, yet delivers real-time photorealism on a large scale. This parallel rendering system was inspired by a similar system recently built at Princeton University. Proposed extensions to that work include a significant expansion in scale, new task-scheduling algorithms, a new integrated network design that links graphics card drivers to network interface card drivers in distributed Linux systems, and an extension of the Keller technique, called instant radiosity, to deliver real-time, global illumination. Design and implementation of the platform should provide graduate students in computer science with valuable hands-on experience in designing large-scale systems for distributed processing. The resulting platform should serve as a valuable research tool for several groups including the NSF ERC group, which will use visualization to explore product and process design for new fibers and films. The enabling code extensions, to widely-available open software systems that this project builds, will be freely available over the Internet.