Lichtenbelt, BartholdA. Kaufmann and W. Strasser and S. Molnar and B.-O. Schneider2014-02-062014-02-0619970-89791-961-01727-3471https://doi.org/10.2312/EGGH/EGGH97/111-119Visualizing three dimensional discrete datasets has been a topic of many research projects and papers in the past decade. We discuss the issues that come up when designing a whole computer system capable of visualizing these datasets in real time. We explain the three way chicken and egg problem and discuss Hewlett- Packard s effort at breaking it with the Voxelator API extensions to OpenGL. We enumerate what a good hardware design should accomplish. We discuss what system issues are important and show how to integrate volume visualization hardware in one of Hewlett-Packard s graphics accelerators, the VISUALIZE-48XP. We show why the Voxelator is an efficient and well designed API by explaining how various existing hardware engines will easily fit into the Voxelator framework.C.5.3 [Computer System Implementation] MicrocomputersWorkstationsD.2.0 [Software Engineering] GeneralStandards1.3.1 [Computer Graphics] Hardware ArchitectureGraphics Processors1.3.7 [Computer Graphics] Three Dimensional Graphics and RealismRaytracing.