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Item Developments in High Performance CGI Systems(The Eurographics Association, 1986) Grimsdale, R L.; Lister, P. F.; W. StrasserThis contribution describes some work being undertaken in the design andimplementation of architectures for high performance Computer Image Generationfor a range of applications from workstations to flight simulator visual systems.The work to be described uses a model based on a polygon representation anduses a Geometry Processor sub-system, with a flexible architecture known asMAGIC. This system performs the transformation of the polygon from the 3-Drepresentation to the 2-D perspective projection to the viewing screenco-ordinates and also provides a clipping operation optional in 3-D or 2-D.Two different types of scan conversion system are described, the first the ZoneManagement Processor uses the coherence inherent in the polygon and thesecond system based on a Line Processor uses coherence with spans.Item A Multiple Application Graphics Integrated Circuit - MAGIC(The Eurographics Association, 1986) Agate, M.; Finch, H.R.; Garel, A.A.; Grimsdale, R.L.; Simmonds, A.C.; Lister, P. F.; A.A.G. RequichaMAGIC is a geometry processor which Corms a part of a graphics system based on parallel processing. The number of MAGIC processors required is dictated by the desired system performance. Each unit is capable of controlling the transformation of points and edges from the co-ordinate system of the world model into screen co-ordinates, and performing the associated clipping operations. The proposed VLSI implementation of these transformations is intended to be sufficiently flexible for additional operations such as texture mapping and ray tracing to be supported.Item Testing Geometric Primitive Shaders(The Eurographics Association, 1991) Dunnett, G. J.; White, M.; Lister, P. F.; Grimsdale, R. L.; A. KaufmanWe present a design and test strategy for Geometric Primitive Shadersintegratedcircuits which perform rasterisation of primitives such as vectors and triangles.The design strategy proceeds through various levels of detail, and we describethe need for testing as the design advances. A suitable set of test are given for a typicalshader. Our experiences in applying the strategy to a real device are discussed,together with the tests which we devised, and practical compromises which we had to make."Item Performance of Space Subdivision Techniques in Ray Tracing(Blackwell Science Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1992) McNeill, M. D. J.; Shah, B. C.; Hebert, M.-P.; Lister, P. F.; Grimsdale, R. L.Whilst providing images of excellent quality, ray tracing is a computationally intensive task. The first part of this paper compares the speed-up achieved in ray tracing using various space subdivision algorithms and discusses the implications of implementing the algorithms on parallel processing systems. The second part addresses the problem of building the data structure within the rendering process, a situation which occurs when the rendering process is parallelised and dynamic scenes are rendered. Greater performance can be achieved with dynamic structure building compared to creation of the structure prior to rendering. The dynamic building algorithm proposed reduces the building time and storage cost of space subdivision structures, and decreases the data structure creation-render cycle time, thus enhancing image parallelism performance.Item The AIDA Display Processor System Architecture(The Eurographics Association, 1990) Evans, S. R.; Grimsdale, R. 1.; Lister, P. F.; Nimmo, A. D.; Richard Grimsdale and Arie KaufmanThis paper describes the Advanced Image Display Architecture, AIDA. The primary aims were to design a graphics display subsystem capable of satisfying the needs of both high performance workstations and vehicle simulator visual systems. AIDA can accept planar triangle primitives which have been transformed, clipped and projected by preceding stages. The system implements many desirable features including modularity, anti-aliasing, translucency, pixel-rate hidden surface removal and Gouraud shading. AIDA has been designed to take advantage of ASIC technology in the implementation of its processing units.Item MARTI-A Multiprocessor Architecture for Ray Tracing Images(The Eurographics Association, 1990) Hebert, M-P.; McNeill, M. D. J.; Shah, B.; Grimsdale, R. 1.; Lister, P. F.; Richard Grimsdale and Arie KaufmanMultiprocessor systems are well suited to ray tracing, since each ray can be traced independently. However, the large databases required to model complex scenes create problems of data access. In this paper we propose a multiprocessor architecture for ray tracing which removes the need for duplication of the database at processor level. The database is held on a group processor basis, and resides in shared memory. Many of these groups, or clusters, can be replicated to form a highly parallel multiprocessing system. Results of a software simulation of the architecture are promising, indicating that a large number of processors per cluster is possible.