pkh@vap.vi.ri.cmu.edu (Ping Kang Hsiung) (09/22/89)
Does anyone have a collection of performance (timing) data based on running a raytracer (preferablly a publicly available raytracer, e.g. mtv or qrt) on various machines? In specific, I am interested in the answer(s) to the following question: To make a ray-tracing based animation film, which commercial machine(s) (excluding in-house hardware) can give the shortest computation time with moderate effort in optimization. For example, my experience indicates that mtv runs on a Cray Y-MP (-hintrinsic,o_level3) ~2.6x than on a PMAX, is this (Cray time) the fastest turn-around one can expect? Will a Connection Machine do better than this? What about an Intel iPSC? The Meiko transputer array? Silicon Graphics's Power series? Any info. is appreicated.
spl@mcnc.org (Steve Lamont) (09/22/89)
In article <6224@pt.cs.cmu.edu> pkh@vap.vi.ri.cmu.edu (Ping Kang Hsiung) writes: >For example, my experience indicates that mtv runs on a >Cray Y-MP (-hintrinsic,o_level3) ~2.6x than on a PMAX, is this >(Cray time) the fastest turn-around one can expect? >Will a Connection Machine do better than this? What about an Intel iPSC? >The Meiko transputer array? Silicon Graphics's Power series? Well, it depends on what other things you feel prepared to do. I have both an IRIS 4D/120 and a Y-MP here (we just installed a Stardent Titan yesterday, also) and see the same sort of numbers. I'll run a couple of experiments today and get back to you with actual bench marks, if you'd like. I am currently working on a parallelized version of MTV and should be able to give you some results from that in a couple of days, barring getting blown away by Hurricane Hugo, that is :-). In any case, in order to take advantage of any parallelism on an MPP like a CM, you'll probably have to do a lot of recoding. The CM is a SIMD machine which does not really lend itself *directly* to ray tracing. I understand that TMC has done some interesting algorithmic development to actually *do* ray tracing, but the code certainly would not look anything like MTV as it stands right now. Barry, are you out there lurking? Any comments? The iPSC and Meiko systems would probably be more straightforward. If you're interested in results, contact me by private email and I'll be glad to share my thoughts with you. spl (the p stands for parallel) -- Steve Lamont, sciViGuy EMail: spl@ncsc.org NCSC, Box 12732, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 "Surrealism only comes later when it seems 'reality' becomes difficult to achieve." - E. Miya, NASA Ames Research Center