A Large Negro wrote:
> 
> In short, I would like to see if it is feasible to use the latest
> graphics cards to accellerate POVRay. My goal would be to modify the
> SMP code of POVRay to identify each GPU in the system as just another
> CPU to split the workload with. In the past, ray tracers have been
> successfully written that use the GPU. However, they have been what I
> would term bare bones ray tracers. They have not supported things like
> refraction or radiosity. My thesis would test if it is possible to do
> the same with a full-featured ray tracer.

It is unlikely that something like this can be successful.  Current 
graphics cards only have very specialized capabilities.  Therefore they 
are usually programmed in special languages.  Typical tasks for this are 
relatively simple and uniform algorithms like fluid simulation or image 
processing.  The main tracing function of POV-Ray and what's called by 
it deal with a huge bandwidth of algorithms and data structures.  The 
vast majority of the POV-Ray source code can get involved in this 
process somewhere.  You would either need to rewrite all this or have a 
fully featured C++-Compiler available that generates code for your GPU. 
  I'd say if it was possible to run the POV-Ray tracing function on a 
GPU you could run pretty much anything on it.

The only sensible way of making use of GPUs in POV-Ray would be 
secondary processings.  For this POV-Ray 3.6 and 3.7 would not make that 
much of a difference.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 31 Oct. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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