From Turing Machine to Global Illumination

Chun-Fa ChangNational Taiwan Normal University

Outline My first computer (CASIO fx3600) Turning machine and von Neumann

architecture GPU pipeline Local and global illumination Shadow and reflection through texture Programmable GPUs

Calculator vs. Computer What is the difference between

a calculator and a computer? Doesn’t a compute-r just

“compute”? The Casio fx3600p calculated

can be programmed (38 steps allowed).

Turing Machine Can be adapted to simulates the logic of any

computer that could possibly be constructed. von Neumann architecture implements a

universal Turing machine. Look them up at Wikipedia!

Outline My first computer (CASIO fx3600) Turning machine and von Neumann

architecture GPU pipeline Local and global illumination Shadow and reflection through texture Programmable GPUs

Simplified View

The Data Flow:3D Polygons (+Colors, Lights, Normals, Texture

Coordinates…etc.) 2D Polygons 2D Pixels (I.e., Output Images)

Transform(& Lighting)

Rasterization

Outline My first computer (CASIO fx3600) Turning machine and von Neumann

architecture GPU pipeline Local and global illumination Shadow and reflection through texture Programmable GPUs

Global Effects

translucent surface

shadow

multiple reflection

Local vs. Global

How Does GPU Draw This?

Quiz Q1: A straightforward GPU pipeline give us

local illumination only. Why?

Q2: What typical effects are missing?

Hint: How is an object drawn? Do they consider the relationship with other objects?

Shadow, reflection, and refraction…

Wait but I’ve seen shadow and reflection in games before…

With Shadows Without Shadows

Outline My first computer (CASIO fx3600) Turning machine and von Neumann

architecture GPU pipeline Local and global illumination Shadow and reflection through texture Programmable GPUs

Adding “Memory” to the GPU Computation Modern GPUs allow:

The usage of multiple textures. Rendering algorithms that use multiple passes.

Transform(& Lighting)

Rasterization

Textures

Faked Global Illumination Shadow, Reflection, BRDF…etc. In theory, real global illumination is not

possible in current graphics pipeline: Conceptually a loop of individual polygons. No interaction between polygons.

Can this be changed by multi-pass rendering?

Case Study: Shadow Map Using two textures: color and depth Relatively straightforward design using pixel

(fragment) shaders on GPUs.

Image Source: Cass Everitt et al., “Hardware Shadow Mapping” NVIDIA SDK White Paper

Eye’s View Light’s View Depth/Shadow Map

Basic Steps of Shadow Maps Render the scene from the light’s point of

view, Use the light’s depth buffer as a texture

(shadow map), Projectively texture the shadow map onto the

scene, Use “texture color” (comparison result) in

fragment shading.

Outline My first computer (CASIO fx3600) Turning machine and von Neumann

architecture GPU pipeline Local and global illumination Shadow and reflection through texture Programmable GPUs

PC Graphics Architecture Two buses on PC: System Bus (CPU-

Memory) and Peripheral I/O Bus. Before AGP: narrow path (I/O Bus) between

main memory and graphics memory (for frame buffer, Z buffer, texture, vertex data…etc.)

AGP and PCI-e speed up the link between host PC and graphics processor (GPU)

Source: http://www.karbosguide.com/hardware/module2d03a.htm

New Chips Are Coming Intel Broadwell

CPU and GPU on the same die (silicon chip) Bandwidth no longer limited by chipsets.

Processors for Phones & Tablets: Qualcomm Snapdragon & Adreno Apple A8, A9, and beyond Mediatek, NVIDIA, Intel ATOM…etc.

NVIDIA Geforce 6800

NVIDIA Geforce 8800

NVIDIA Fermi (Geforce 400 and 500 Series)

From NVIDIA Fermi Architecture Whitepaperhttp://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/fermi_white_papers/NVIDIA_Fermi_Compute_Architecture_Whitepaper.pdf

How to Program a GPU? Writing a 3D graphics application program

Typically in DirectX or OpenGL Still CPU programming in C/C++ The APIs and drivers do the dirty work for you.

Writing GPU shaders Typically in GLSL or Cg Still drawing 3D objects Working like plug-in’s to the 3D rendering

pipeline

GPGPU General-purpose GPU computing

No longer restricted to graphics applications. To utilize the abundant “GFLOPs” in GPU.

Could be implemented in GPU shaders By clever transformation of problem domains. Textures to store the data structures However, shaders could not perform memory writes

with calculated addresses (a.k.a. scatter operations)

GPU as a Parallel Computing Platform Treating GPUs as parallel machinery

Not quite the same as shared-memory multi-processor.

A special kind of memory hierarchy. NVIDIA CUDA

Widely adopted in real-world applications OpenCL

For non-NV GPUs and multi-core CPUs

Branch Divergence on GPUWarp

½ performance for each branch!

…if x1 – x0 > y1 – y0:

xMajorIteration()

yMajorIteration()else:

…

Examples

GPU Shading Effects Reflection and refraction Relief on surface Ambient occlusion and lighting

Real-Time Rendering of Splashing Water Particle system simulation for

real-time interaction with terrains and dynamic objects.

Reconstruction of the splash surface with 2D metaballs

Ray Tracing on GPU Using OpenCL or NVIDIA CUDA Or use NVIDIA OptiX