Retained-Mode Parallel Graphics Rendering For Cooperative Design Environments

Parallel graphics rendering is a significant tool for cooperative design systems which delivers high performance graphics rendering and super resolution display for cooperative VR environment. It can be classified as immediate-mode and retained-mode. Retained-mode ones may deliver higher performance with relatively lower cost, providing appropriate architecture. In this paper a four-layer framework of retained-mode parallel rendering is presented, with prototype systems of sort-first and sort-last then introduced. The sort-first prototype system adjusts primitives between rendering nodes at runtime in order to reduce network traffic and uses 'ball' structure to control parallel granularity. The sort-last prototype system uses a wise strategy to balance workload between rendering nodes and decrease the amount of pixels transferred through network. Test results show that both of the systems can provide higher performance with relatively lower overhead. As graphics object distribution mechanism is important for a real cooperative design system, a client-transparent solution is then presented