28041688
Real-Time GPU-Based Simulation of Dynamic Terrain
Although a great deal of research effort has been devoted to the realistic and efficient rendering of terrain data, the existing research mainly focuses on displaying static terrain. The realistic simulation of dynamic terrain, including vehicle-terrain interactions, is absent in most 3D graphical applications. In this paper, we present a new GPU-based algorithm for dynamic terrain simulation. A key component of this algorithm is a Dynamically-Displaced Height Map (DDHM) which is generated and manipulated on the GPU. In addition, our method achieves real-time performance by using new features of the latest graphics hardware and shader technology. We demonstrate our algorithm by simulating a ground vehicle traveling on soft terrain. Our algorithm is particularly useful for ground based visual simulation applications as well as 3D games.
6725306
Design and Implementation of a Workflow Rendering Engine
Business visualization is an effective tool for business decision making and problem solving. Despite its obvious benefits, 3D visualization is far less common in practice than it should be due to the lack of software support. To address this problem, we have developed a workflow rendering engine that facilitates the 3D visualization of business process information for organizational process analysis and efficiency studies. The workflow information is represented in XML format to be compatible with the new Web graphics standard X3D. The rendering engine is implemented using C++ and OpenGL in order to take full advantage of modern 3D graphics hardware. The object-oriented design makes this engine highly extensible.
35564489
Accelerated 2D Image Processing on GPUs
Graphics processing units (GPUs) in recent years have evolved to become powerful, programmable vector processing units. Furthermore, the maximum processing power of current generation GPUs is roughly four times that of current generation CPUs (central processing units), and that power is doubling approximately every nine months, about twice the rate of Moore's law. This research examines the GPU's advantage at performing convolutionbased image processing tasks compared to the CPU. Straight-forward 2D convolutions show up to a 130:1 speedup on the GPU over the CPU, with an average speedup in our tests of 59:1. Over convolutions performed with the highly optimized FFTW routines on the CPU, the GPU showed an average speedup of 18:1 for filter kernel sizes from 3x3 to 29x29.
15780176
Understanding the design space of referencing in collaborative augmented reality environments
For collaborative environments to be successful, it is critical that participants have the ability to generate effective references. Given the heterogeneity of the objects and the myriad of possible scenarios for collaborative augmented reality environments, generating meaningful references within them can be difficult. Participants in co-located physical spaces benefit from non-verbal communication, such as eye gaze, pointing and body movement; however, when geographically separated, this form of communication must be synthesized using computer-mediated techniques. We have conducted an exploratory study using a collaborative building task of constructing both physical and virtual models to better understand inter-referential awareness -- or the ability for one participant to refer to a set of objects, and for that reference to be understood. Our contributions are not necessarily in presenting novel techniques, but in narrowing the design space for referencing in collaborative augmented reality. This study suggests collaborative reference preferences are heavily dependent on the context of the workspace.
2014328
A 3D reconstruction algorithm based on 3D deformable atlas
Reconstructing 3D models from 2D images is an important problem in visualization, particularly in medical and biological visualization. We present a new algorithm for 3D model reconstruction from 2D-images. In our approach, a 3D atlas is deformed to fit the feature data set in the target images. Compared with existing 3D reconstruction techniques, our approach is more efficient and easier to control. The resultant model has good inherent connectivity and smoothness. The resolution of the final model is determined by the resolution of reference model rather than the dataset. The model generates highly detailed view with a limited number of images. This algorithm has been successfully applied to medical simulation.
16266615
NeuroQL: A Domain-Specific Query Language for Neuroscience Data
In this paper, we propose a domain-specific query language called NeuroQL for the neuroscience domain. NeuroQL is designed primarily for neuroinformatics database users and aims to enable users to directly interact with neuroscience databases in their professional concepts and terms with the help of a conceptual data model. NeuroQL is DBMS independent and can be translated into traditional query language such as SQL, OQL and XQuery. It integrates some object-oriented features, and supports neuron domain-specific data types and query operators, which can dynamically evolve when the underlying database schema evolves.
8902892
Dynamic Load Balancing for I/O- and Memory-Intensive Workload in clusters Using a Feedback Control Mechanism
One common assumption of the existing models of load balancing is that the weights of resources and I/O buffer size are statically configured. Though the static configuration of these parameters performs well in a cluster where the workload can be predicted, its performance is poor in dynamic systems where the workload is unknown. In this paper, a new feedback control mechanism is proposed to improve the overall performance of a cluster with I/O-intensive and memory-intensive workload. The mechanism dynamically adjusts the resource weights as well as the I/O buffer size. Results from a trace-driven simulation show that this mechanism is effective in enhancing the performance of a number of existing load-balancing schemes.
41212780
Real-time rendering of 3D medical data sets
Interactive exploration of three dimension (3D) medical data sets is required by many applications, but the huge amount of computational time and storage space needed for rendering do not allow the visualization of large medical data sets by now. In this paper we present a new algorithm for rendering large medical data sets at interactive frame rates on standard PC hardware. The input data is converted into a compressed hierarchical wavelet representation in a preprocessing step. During rendering, the wavelet representation is decompressed on-the-fly and rendered using hardware texture mapping. The level of detail used for rendering is adapted to the local frequency spectrum of the data and its position relative to the viewer. Using a prototype implementation of the algorithm we were able to perform an interactive walkthrough of large medical data sets on a single of-the-shelf PC.
1145290
Hamilton cycles in regular 3-connected graphs
Abstract We show in this paper that for k ⩾63, every 3-connected, k -regular simple graph on at most 22 7 k vertices is hamiltonian.
6280246
A dynamic load balancing scheme for I/O-intensive applications in distributed systems
In this paper, a new I/O-aware load-balancing scheme is presented to improve overall performance of a distributed system with a general and practical workload including I/O activities. The proposed scheme dynamically detects I/O load imbalance on nodes of a distributed system and determines whether to migrate the I/O requests of some jobs from overloaded nodes to other less- or under-loaded nodes, depending on data migration cost and remote I/O access overhead. Besides balancing I/O load, the scheme judiciously takes into account both CPU and memory load sharing in distributed systems, thereby maintaining the same level of performance as the existing schemes when I/O load is low or well balanced. Results from a trace-driven simulation study show that, compared with the existing schemes that only consider CPU and memory, the proposed scheme reduces the mean slowdown by up to 54.5% (with an average of 39.9%). On the other hand, when compared to the existing approaches that only consider I/O, the proposed scheme reduces the mean slowdown by up to 57.2% (with an average of 31.6%). More importantly, the new scheme improves over a very recent algorithm found in the literature that considers all the three resources by up to 49.6% (with an average of up to 41.9%).
26735928
I/O Response Time in a Fault-Tolerant Parallel Virtual File System
A fault tolerant parallel virtual file system is designed and implemented to provide high I/O performance and high reliability. A queuing model is used to analyze in detail the average response time when multiple clients access the system. The results show that I/O response time is with a function of several operational parameters. It decreases with the increase in I/O buffer hit rate for read requests, write buffer size for write requests and number of server nodes in the parallel file system, while higher I/O requests arrival rate increases I/O response time.