关键词: 并行绘制, 图像合成, 分布式集群, 硬件加速, 网络处理单元

Abstract: In real-time rendering of massive data sets, it is a popular common solution to use PC clusters for the real-time parallel rendering. The image composition of all the results parallelly rendered by the cluster computers is a notorious bottleneck in sort-last clustered rendering systems. This paper presents a network processing unit (NPU for short)-based image composition method and a sort-last distributed rendering system, called NPUPR. The experimental results show that the NPU-based scheme can get three times faster frame rate than the ‘direct send scheme’ in the case of four rendering nodes. This paper also presents the scheme to extend four rendering nodes to more rendering nodes. Analytically, the system is fully scalable with negligible penalty in frame rate.

Key words: parallel rendering, image compositing, PC clusters, hardware-assisted, NPU