Lightning-2: A High-Performance Display Subsystem for PC Clusters
Gordon Stoll,
Matthew Eldridge,
Dan Patterson,
Art Webb,
Steven Berman,
Richard Levy,
Chris Caywood,
Milton Taveira,
Stephen Hunt, and
Pat Hanrahan
Appears in Computer Graphics (SIGGRAPH 2001)
Abstract:
Clusters of PCs are increasingly popular as cost-effective platforms
for supercomputer-class applications. Given recent performance
improvements in graphics accelerators, clusters are similarly
attractive for demanding graphics applications. We describe the
design and implementation of Lightning-2, a display subsystem for such
a cluster. The system scales in both the number of rendering nodes
and the number of displays supported, and allows any pixel data
generated from any node to be dynamically mapped to any location on
any display. A number of image-compositing functions are supported,
including color-keying and depth-compositing. A distinguishing
feature of the system is its platform independence: it connects to
graphics accelerators via an industry-standard digital video port and
requires no modifications to accelerator hardware or device drivers.
As a result, rendering clusters that utilize Lightning-2 can be
upgraded across multiple generations of graphics accelerators with
little effort. We demonstrate a renderer that achieves 106 Mtri/s on
an 8-node cluster using Lightning-2 to perform sort-last depth
compositing.
Paper:
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