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IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems 2005 E88-D(11):2582-2590; doi:10.1093/ietisy/e88-d.11.2582
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Copyright © 2005 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers

Regular Section -- Papers -- Computer Graphics

Hybrid Image Composition Mechanism for Enhancing Volume Graphics Clusters

Jorji NONAKA1, Nobuyuki KUKIMOTO2, Yasuo EBARA3, Masato OGATA4, Takeshi IWASHITA3, Masanori KANAZAWA3 and Koji KOYAMADA5

1 The author is with the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto-shi, 606–8501 Japan. E-mail: jorji{at}ais.sys.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp, 2 The author is with the Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto-shi, 606–8501 Japan and with the Department of Informatics, Tohwa University, Fukuoka-shi, 815–8510 Japan., 3 The authors are with the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto-shi, 606–8501 Japan., 4 The author is with the Mitsubishi Precision Co. Ltd., Tokyo, 108–0073 Japan., 5 The author is with the Center for Promotion the Excellence in Higher Education, Kyoto University, Kyoto-shi, 606–8501 Japan.

Volume Graphics Clusters (VG Clusters) have proven to be efficient in a wide range of visualization applications and have also shown promise in some other applications where the image composition device could be fully utilized. The main differentiating feature from other graphics clusters is a specialized image composition device, commercially available as the MPC Image Compositor, which enables the building of do-it-yourself VG Clusters. Although this device is highly scalable, the unidirectional composition flow limits the data subdivision to the quantity of physically available rendering nodes. In addition, the limited buffer memory limits the maximum capable image composition size, therefore limiting its use in large-scale data visualization and high-resolution visualization. To overcome these limitations, we propose and evaluate an image composition mechanism in which additional hardware is used for assisting the image composition process. Because of the synergistic use of two distinct image composition hardware devices we named it "Hybrid Image Composition". Some encouraging results were obtained showing the effectiveness of this solution in improving the VG Cluster 's potential. A low-cost parallel port based hardware barrier is also presented as an efficient method for further enhancing this kind of small-scale VG Cluster. Moreover, this solution has proven to be especially useful in clusters built using low-speed networks, such as Fast Ethernet, which are still in common use.

Key Words: volume graphics cluster, image composition, parallel rendering, large-scale data visualization, high-resolution visualization

Manuscript received February 16, 2005. Manuscript revised May 30, 2005.


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