Torborg A Parallel Processor Architecture For Graphics Arithmetic Operations英文电子书.pdf

~ Computer Graphics, Volume 21, Number 4, July 1987 A P a r a l l e l P r o c e s s o r A r c h i t e c t u r e f o r Graphics A r i t h m e t i c O p e r a t i o n s John G. Torborg Raster Technologies, Inc. Two Robbins Road Westford, Mass. 01886 INTRODUCTION ABSTRACT Multiprocessor architectures have been used for sev- Interactive 3D graphics applications require significant eral years to meet the demanding computational re- arithmetic processing to handle complex models, par- quirements of interactive 3D graphics. Simple graph- ticularly if realistic rendering techniques are used. ics operations such as 3D wireframe manipulation can Current semiconductor technology cannot provide the easily be divided into a sequence of pipelined opera- necessary performance without some form of multi- tions. If independent processors are used to handle processing. these operations, very high performance can be at- tained [Clark 1982]. However, more complex opera- This paper describes a graphics processor architecture tions such as surface tesselation and lighting calcul