A parallel rendering environment is being developed to utilize the IBM Scaleable Graphics Engine (SGE), a hardware frame buffer for parallel computers. Goals of this software development effort include finding efficient ways of producing and displaying graphics generated on SP nodes and of assisting programmers in adapting or creating scientific simulation applications to use the SGE. Four software development phases are discussed utilize the SGE: tunneling, SMP Rendering, graphics API development using an OpenGL API implementation which utilizes the SGE in the parallel environment, and additions to the SGE-enabled OpenGL API implementation that uses threads. The SGE's ability to accept pixel data from multiple nodes simultaneously makes it a viable tool for use. With the performance observed in the test applications and performance optimizations gained programmers writing applications for IBM SPs and Linux clusters will be able to support high-speed output of graphics and be able to interact with data.
Revised: September 20, 2011 |
Published: November 10, 2001
Citation
Perrine K.A., and D.R. Jones. 2001.Parallel Graphics and Interactivity with the Scaleable Graphics Engine. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE SC2001 Supercomputing Conference, November 10-16, 2001, Denver Colorado. New York, New York:Association for Computing Machinery.PNNL-SA-35059.doi:10.1109/SC.2001.10045