Christopher Dyken

State-of-the-art in heterogeneous computing

Node level heterogeneous architectures have become attractive during the last decade for several reasons: compared to traditional symmetric CPUs, they offer high peak performance and are energy and/or cost efficient. With the increase of fine-grained parallelism in high-performance computing, as well as the introduction of parallelism in workstations, there is an acute need for a good overview and understanding of these architectures. We give an overview of the state-of-the-art in heterogeneous computing, focusing on three commonly found architectures: the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture, graphics processing units (GPUs), and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). We present a review of hardware, available software tools, and an overview of state-of-the-art techniques and algorithms. Furthermore, we present a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the architectures, and give our view on the future of heterogeneous computing.

High-speed Marching Cubes using HistoPyramids

We present an implementation approach for Marching Cubes (MC) on graphics hardware for OpenGL 2.0 or comparable graphics APIs. It currently outperforms all other known graphics processing units (GPU)‐based iso‐surface extraction algorithms in direct rendering for sparse or large volumes, even those using the recently introduced geometry shader (GS) capabilites. To achieve this, we outfit the Histogram Pyramid (HP) algorithm, previously only used in GPU data compaction, with the capability for arbitrary data expansion. After reformulation of MC as a data compaction and expansion process, the HP algorithm becomes the core of a highly efficient and interactive MC implementation. For graphics hardware lacking GSs, such as mobile GPUs, the concept of HP data expansion is easily generalized, opening new application domains in mobile visual computing. Further, to serve recent developments, we present how the HP can be implemented in the parallel programming language CUDA (compute unified device architecture), by using a novel 1D chunk/layer construction.

Transfinite mean value interpolation

Transfinite mean value interpolation has recently emerged as a simple and robust way to interpolate a function f defined on the boundary of a planar domain. In this paper we study basic properties of the interpolant, including sufficient conditions on the boundary of the domain to guarantee interpolation when f is continuous. Then, by deriving the normal derivative of the interpolant and of a mean value weight function, we construct a transfinite Hermite interpolant and discuss various applications.

Preferred directions for resolving the non-uniqueness of Delaunay triangulations

This note proposes a simple rule to determine a unique triangulation among all Delaunay triangulations of a planar point set, based on two preferred directions. We show that the triangulation can be generated by extending Lawsons edge-swapping algorithm and that point deletion is a local procedure. The rule can be implemented exactly when the points have integer coordinates and can be used to improve image compression methods.

Semi-Uniform Adaptive Patch Tessellation

We present an adaptive tessellation scheme for surfaces consisting of parametric patches. The resulting tessellations are topologically uniform, yet consistent and watertight across boundaries of patches with different tessellation levels. Our scheme is simple to implement, requires little memory and is well suited for instancing, a feature available on current Graphical Processing Units that allows a substantial performance increase. We describe how the scheme can be implemented efficiently and give performance benchmarks comparing it to some other approaches.

Real‐Time GPU Silhouette Refinement using Adaptively Blended Bézier Patches

We present an algorithm for detecting and extracting the silhouette edges of a triangle mesh in real time using Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). We also propose a tessellation strategy for visualizing the mesh with smooth silhouettes through a continuous blend between Bézier patches with varying level of detail. Furthermore, we show how our techniques can be integrated with displacement and normal mapping. We give details on our GPU implementation and provide a performance analysis with respect to mesh size.

Simultaneous curve simplification

In this paper we present a method for simultaneous simplification of a collection of piecewise linear curves in the plane. The method is based on triangulations, and the main purpose is to remove line segments from the piecewise linear curves without changing the topological relations between the curves. The method can also be used to construct a multi-level representation of a collection of piecewise linear curves. We illustrate the method by simplifying cartographic contours and a set of piecewise linear curves representing a road network.

A framework for OpenGL client-server rendering

We present a software framework that facilitates the development of OpenGL applications utilizing the limited GPU capacities of a portable client in combination with the high-end rendering hardware on a server. The resulting web-application uses standard technologies and can be run on a wide variety of devices, such as smart phones, tablets and laptops. The framework is designed to make it simple changing an existing OpenGL application into a web-application, gradually adding client-side rendering. Furthermore, it provides automatic network scaling to provide interactivity even on poor connections.