high performance computing on graphics processing units: hgpu.org

Graphics Processor Units are used for many general purpose processing due to high compute power available on them. Regular, data-parallel algorithms map well to the SIMD architecture of current GPU. Irregular algorithms on discrete structures like graphs are harder to map to them. Efficient data-mapping primitives can play crucial role in mapping such algorithms onto […]

Efficient visibility queries are key in many interactive rendering techniques, such as occlusion culling, level of detail determination, and perceptual rendering. The occlusion query mechanism natively supported by GPUs is carried out for batches of rendered geometry. In this paper, we present two novel ways of determining visibility by intelligently querying summed area tables and […]

We demonstrate that a video gaming machine containing two consumer graphical cards can outpace a state-of-the-art quad-core processor workstation by a factor of more than 180x in Hartree-Fock energy + gradient calculations. Such performance makes it possible to run large scale Hartree-Fock and Density Functional Theory calculations, which typically require hundreds of traditional processor cores, […]

A survey of graphics developers on the issue of texture mapping hardware for volume rendering would most likely find that the vast majority of them view limited texture memory as one of the most serious drawbacks of an otherwise fine technology. In this paper, we propose a compression scheme for static and time-varying volumetric data […]

We recently introduced an efficient technique for out-of-core rendering and management of large textured landscapes. The technique, called Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes (BDAM), is based on a paired tree structure: a tiled quadtree for texture data and a pair of bintrees of small triangular patches for the geometry. These small patches are TINs that are […]

Deformable isosurfaces, implemented with level-set methods, have demonstrated a great potential in visualization for applications such as segmentation, surface processing, and surface reconstruction. Their usefulness has been limited, however, by their high computational cost and and reliance on significant parameter tuning. This paper presents a solution to these challenges by describing graphics processor (GPU) based […]

We propose methods to accelerate texture-based volume rendering by skipping invisible voxels. We partition the volume into sub-volumes, each containing voxels with similar properties. Sub-volumes composed of only voxels mapped to empty by the transfer function are skipped. To render the adaptively partitioned sub-volumes in visibility order, we reorganize them into an orthogonal BSP tree. […]

Current graphics hardware can render procedurally shaded objects in real-time. However, due to resource and performance limitations, interactive shaders can not yet approach the complexity of shaders written for film production and software rendering, which may stretch to thousands of lines. These constraints limit not only the complexity of a single shader, but also the […]

Graphics hardware is undergoing a change from fixed-function pipelines to more programmable organizations that resemble general purpose stream processors. In this paper, we show that certain general algorithms, not normally associated with computer graphics, can be mapped to such designs. Specifically, we cast nonlinear optimization as a data streaming process that is well matched to […]

This paper presents a physically-based, visually-realistic interactive cloud simulation. Clouds in our system are modeled using partial differential equations describing fluid motion, thermodynamic processes, buoyant forces, and water phase transitions. We also simulate the interaction of clouds with light, including self-shadowing and light scattering.We implement both simulations — dynamic and radiometric — entirely on programmable […]

We present a case study in the application of graphics hardware to general-purpose numeric computing. Specifically, we describe a system, built on programmable graphics hardware, able to solve a variety of partial differential equations with complex boundary conditions. Many areas of graphics, simulation, and computational science require efficient techniques for solving such equations. Our system […]

We present a modified photon mapping algorithm capable of running entirely on GPUs. Our implementation uses breadth-first photon tracing to distribute photons using the GPU. The photons are stored in a grid-based photon map that is constructed directly on the graphics hardware using one of two methods: the first method is a multipass technique that […]