Matt Swarm wrote in message <37bc7173@news.povray.org>...
>>The scene should be
>>complex enough to give the faster machines a workout, yet not so 'tough'
as
>>to render (pun intended) the slower machines useless for several days. I
>>think it should also be aesthetically pleasing and not just a
>loop-generated
>>scene with thousands of reflective and refractive objects.
>>
>
>Several have commented on this issue.
>
>I agree on the need, but fear that a conventional program approach is
>destined to fail.
>
>The problem is that the gap between the slowest machines and the fastest is
>growing nonlinearly.   What makes this so is the 'Grove effect' plus growth
>in distributive and cluster computing.
>
>I propose a Smart Benchmark, which senses how long a routine is taking, and
>terminates after a set period, projecting the time for completion of the
>'full' program-- whatever the machine.   All this code is (or SHOULD be)
>deterministic, nonrandom, so extrapolation should be straightforward.
>Maybe an animation, with option to deduct for disk access times.


How about an image where the render time scales linearly with image area?
This way, you simply render the image at what you consider an appropriate
resolution for your machine (320x240 for a 486/33, 320000x240000 for a
supercomputer, etc) and then apply a correction factor for the area (the
486/33 in this example would have a correction factor of x1000000)?

Mark

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