Memory-Savvy Distributed Interactive Ray Tracing

Abstract

Interactive ray tracing in a cluster environment requires paying close attention to the constraints of a loosely coupled distributed system. To render large scenes interactively, memory limits and network latency must be addressed efficiently. In this paper, we improve previous systems by moving to a page-based distributed shared memory layer, resulting in faster and easier access to a shared memory space. The technique is designed to take advantage of the large virtual memory space provided by 64-bit machines. We also examine task reuse through decentralized load balancing and primitive reorganization to complement the shared memory system. These techniques improve memory coherence and are valuable when physical memory is limited.