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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Parallel Polygon Rendering with Precomputed Surface Patches
    (Eurographics Association, 1987) Theoharis, Theoharis; Page, Ian
    We describe an algorithm for rendering a restricted class of trapeziums, and hence arbitrary polygons, in parallel on an NxN SIMD array processor. The algorithm achieves good performance by precomputing “surface patches” (finite portions of half -planes), thus trading storage for increased speed. The number of surface patches that are precomputed grows only linearly with the size of the array processor but as the square of the subpixel accuracy desired. NxN texture patterns can be added at very little extra cost additional to filling a trapezium with a particular colour.
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    Incremental Polygon Rendering on a SIMD Processor Array
    (Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1988) Theoharis, Theohaiis; Page, Ian
    We demonstrate how both area coherence and parallelism can be exploited in order to speed up rendering operations on a SIMD square array of processors. Our algorithms take advantage of the method of differences, in order to incrementally compute the values of a linear polynomial function at discrete intervals and thus implement area rendering operations efficiently. We discuss how filling of convex polygons, hidden surface elimination and smooth shading can be implemented on an N ? N processor array that supports planar arithmetic, that is, arithmetic operations performed on N ? N matrices in parallel for all matrix elements. A major attraction of the method we present is that it is based on a SIMD processor array- such machines are now recognised as highly general purpose given the wide range of applications successfully implemented on them.
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    Two Parallel Methods for Polygon Clipping
    (Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Eurographics Association, 1989) Theoharis, Theoharis; Page, Ian
    A control parallel and a novel data parallel implementation of the Sutherland-Hodgman polygon clipping algorithm are presented. The two implementations are based on the INMOS transputer and the AMT Distributed Array Processor respectively- both of these machines are general purpose parallel processors. Performance Figures are reported and implications for further work are discussed.
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    DisArray: A 16x16 RasterOp Processor
    (The Eurographics Association, 1983) Page, Ian; P.J.W. ten Hagen
    RasterOp is a powerful primitive operation for raster graphics. To improve the execution rate of this operation, a machine with a set of 256 1-bit processors organised as a 16x16 array has been constructed. This machine has twodimensional bitmaps as its lowest-level data objects and consequently can manipulate them faster than a conventional (one-dimensional) Von-Neumann machine. Further work is outlined to improve the architecture still further and to integrate the array into a powerful single-user workstation.