Raster Display of a Rotating Object Using Parallel Processing

Abstract

Parallel processing algorithms have been developed which approach real-time in displaying raster graphics images of a single rotating three-dimensional object. The hardware required consists of a large number of individual processors with inter-processor communication restricted to immediate neighbours. The overall structure is as if the processors were spread uniformly over the surface of a sphere. The objects for display are modelled as if they were inside this sphere of processors.Each processor stores the following information: * 1) the intersection points of the object-s surface with a radial line extended from the sphere-s centre along with the surface normals at those intersection points, and * 2) pixels representing a small section of the screen.The algorithm involves an organised message-passing scheme to accomplish rotations of the object description and the subsequent display of the image. A simulation of a system involving several hundred processors indicates that its performance improves as a near-linear function of the number of processors.