SSS-CORE Demonstrations

The following programs were developed to demonstrate the high performance of SSS-CORE.

Multitasking execution of parallel applications
Ray tracing
Mandelbrot set visualization
Movies on flying cubes
Multi-screen movie

Some inline images in the following have links to larger images. Please click on the images, or follow the links, to get the larger images.

Multitasking Execution of Parallel Applications

The following picture shows concurrent execution of two parallel applications.

The upper right application is movies on flying cubes. Two cubes are flying around in 3D space with each surface displaying one movie. One displaying node and six computing nodes cooperate with each other. Each of computing nodes is assigned for two opposite surfaces to perform replay and perspective transformation.
The upper left application is ray tracing. One displaying node and eight computing nodes work together to calculate 3D graphics. Each of computing nodes is cyclically assigned for four pixels to trace incoming ray backward.
As shown above, SSS-CORE is able to execute multiple applications of various parallelism simultaneously in a multitasking environment with time sharing.

The replaying part of this program is based on xanim (Rev. 2.70.6.4), written by Mr. Mark Podlipec.
Copyrights of the animated movies belong to Nagoya Broadcasting Network Co., Ltd and SUNRISE Inc. The movies of cheerleaders are used by courtesy of HONEY BEE.

Ray Tracing

Ray tracing is a method of drawing three-dimensional CG by computing.
For each pixel on a screen at the view reference point, the incoming ray is traced reversely until it meets an object. The color of the object's surface decides the color of the pixel. The direction of the surface, the position of a light source, and the positions of the other objects decide the brightness of the pixel. If a reflective object like a mirror lies, the incoming ray reflected by that object is recursively traced.

This is an example of the output of the ray tracing program.

In the parallelized ray tracing program for SSS-CORE, calculations of pixel values are distributed to computing nodes in a block-cyclic method. Each computing node transfers the results to a displaying node with MBCF.

[picture of executing ray tracing (59KB)]

This picture shows the execution of the ray tracing program. The resulting CG is at the upper right hand. Calculations are distributed to six computing nodes in this example. One node is behind the others because that node also serves as a displaying node.

This ray tracing program was originally written by Mr. T. Yamamoto at Hokkaido University

Mandelbrot Set Visualization

The Mandelbrot set is a set of complex numbers which satisfies the following condition.

  {C : a complex number |
    for the progression
      z(n+1) = z(n) * z(n) + C, z(0) = 0,
    z(n) does not diverge}

The visualization of the Mandelbrot set is a typical fractal CG. The color of the point (x, y) is black if z(n) does not diverge for C = x + yi. If z(n) diverges, the color is decided by the speed of divergence.

The parallelization scheme of a visualizing program is much the same as that of the above ray tracing program.

[picture of drawing Mandelbrot set (38KB)]

This is a picture of executing the parallelized program. The Mandelbrot set is visualized at the upper right hand. Six nodes examine the divergence by computing. Three of them get behind because the ray tracing program is executed on these three nodes at the same time.

Movies on Flying Cubes

This is an original demonstration. Movies are mapped to surfaces of 3D cubes, and the cubes move around in 3D space.

Movies are compressed with the Cinepak coding scheme and stored in the QuickTime format. Each computing node replays two movies and performs perspective transformation for the front movie, and then transfers the resulting pixel data to a displaying node with MBCF using the Z buffer algorithm.

[picture of movies on flying cubes (30KB)]

This is a snapshot of flying cubes. In this example, two cubes move at a speed of about 12 frames/sec.

Multi-screen Movie

This is an original demonstration. Many movies are replayed on the same display.

Movies are compressed with the Cinepak coding scheme and stored in the QuickTime format. Each computing node replays a movie and transfers the pixel data to a displaying node with MBCF.

In this example, 7 movies are replayed simultaneously to demonstrate high bandwidth of MBCF.