Equalizer - Parallel Rendering

Recently the the VMML at the University of Zürich performed a benchmark comparing Chromium and Equalizer on a display wall. The result surprised me, as I would have expected less difference between the two solutions in this setup, since only static ... [More] display lists are used. Unfortunately neither InfiniBand nor the broadcast SPU were available for [...] [Less]

Equalizer uses reference pointers in some places, and the reference count so far was protected by a pthread_mutex (or the equivalent on Windows). The simple reason is that when I implemented it, I didn’t want to spend the time on something better. This week I’ve found the time to replace the lock-protected counter with an atomic [...]

About a month ago I mentioned an issue with OpenMP and pthreads on GCC in another post. This week there was a reply to the bug I’ve opened. Apparently it has been fixed, too bad that it will take quite some time to trickle down into a gcc release and then into OS distributions, but that’s [...]

My first thought when Apple announced OpenCL at this years’ WWDC was ‘Not another GPGPU language!’. While details are still sparse, the Wikipedia article states that OpenCL is submitted to Khronos. This is indeed good news. So far I have shunned GPGPU languages since they tend to be proprietary or not generally available. While using [...]

In this spirit, we’ve just started doing more regular developer releases. Version 0.5.1 is the first one, with the following new features: - Statistics Overlay to understand and eliminate bottlenecks in the rendering pipeline - Support for using ... [More] Paracomp as a compositing backend, see README.paracomp - Network-based instead of file-based model distribution in eqPly - Support for the window [...] [Less]

On the right there’s a simple timeline of the most important toolkits for parallel rendering, naturally with more details for Equalizer. I plan to extend this over time, and maybe even creating one with the major hardware milestones. Any input is welcome - Skywriter VGXT, anyone?

Since a colleague finished the CPU-based alpha-compositing in Equalizer, it was time for another compiler benchmark round. This time I used my MacBook Pro with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz, running Mac OS X 10.5.2. The compilers available were gcc 4.0.1, gcc 4.2.1 and icc 10.1.014. The latter two ones I tested with [...]

We are pleased to announce the release of Equalizer 0.5, a framework for the development and deployment of parallel OpenGL applications. Equalizer 0.5 focuses on scalability, most notably by adding pixel compounds for fill-rate-bound applications and ... [More] a 2-4x performance increase during sort-last compositing. The Programming Guide has been extended to 43 pages and covers various new topics. Preview the content and order your hardcopy today at lulu.com!Equalizer 0.5 now uses GLEW to provide easy-to-use OpenGL extension handling in parallel OpenGL applications. The new support for off-screen PBuffers on all platforms opens new use cases for Equalizer-based applications, for example seamless integration for scalability on multi-GPU workstations. Where available, image compression during network transfer has been accelerated using OpenMP.We would like to thank all individuals and parties who have contributed to the development of Equalizer 0.5. (0 comments) [Less]

We are pleased to announce the release of Equalizer 0.5, a framework for the development and deployment of parallel OpenGL applications. Equalizer 0.5 focuses on scalability, most notably by adding pixel compounds for fill-rate-bound applications and ... [More] a 2-4x performance increase during sort-last compositing. The Programming Guide has been extended to 43 pages and covers various new topics. Preview the content and order your hardcopy today at lulu.com! Equalizer 0.5 now uses GLEW to provide easy-to-use OpenGL extension handling in parallel OpenGL applications. The new support for off-screen PBuffers on all platforms opens new use cases for Equalizer-based applications, for example seamless integration for scalability on multi-GPU workstations. Where available, image compression during network transfer has been accelerated using OpenMP. We would like to thank all individuals and parties who have contributed to the development of Equalizer 0.5. [Less]

We are pleased to announce the release of Equalizer 0.5, a framework for the development and deployment of parallel OpenGL applications. Equalizer 0.5 focuses on scalability, most notably by adding pixel compounds for fill-rate-bound applications ... [More] and a 2-4x performance increase during sort-last compositing. The Programming Guide has been extended to 43 pages and covers various new topics. Preview the content and order your hardcopy today at lulu.com! Equalizer 0.5 now uses GLEW to provide easy-to-use OpenGL extension handling in parallel OpenGL applications. The new support for off-screen PBuffers on all platforms opens new use cases for Equalizer-based applications, for example seamless integration for scalability on multi-GPU workstations. Where available, image compression during network transfer has been accelerated using OpenMP. We would like to thank all individuals and parties who have contributed to the development of Equalizer 0.5. [Less]