POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors Server Time
16 Nov 2024 11:17:08 EST (-0500)
  Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors (Message 1 to 8 of 8)  
From: Shane Chambers
Subject: Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors
Date: 29 Jul 1998 02:36:00
Message: <35BD8DCF.ABD9005A@wtco.net>
Hello,


    Does POV-RAY (any version, any platform) have support for Multiple
Processors?  Are there any plans to support multiple processors, or
distributed processing (say over a network).  Which Platform offers the
fastest version of POV-RAY as far as render speeds go?


    Hey, thanks in Advance,


        -=(*) Shane Chambers (*)=-


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From: Scott Hill
Subject: Re: Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors
Date: 30 Jul 1998 12:43:46
Message: <01bdbbcf$acbc7c20$8c00a8c0@shindo.ddlinks.co.uk>
Shane Chambers <sha### [at] wtconet> wrote in article
<35BD8DCF.ABD9005A@wtco.net>...
> Hello,
> 
> 
>     Does POV-RAY (any version, any platform) have support for Multiple
> Processors?

	IIRC, none of the official builds do, but there's an unofficial build that
does, sorry don't recall what it's called, but I think it's for Linux
platforms only.

> 		Are there any plans to support multiple processors, or
> distributed processing (say over a network).

	I believe so...
-- 
Scott Hill
Sco### [at] DDLinkscouk
Software Engineer (and all round nice guy)

"The best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't
exist..."
								- Verbal Kint.

"the Internet is here so we can waste time talking about nothing in 
 particular when we should be working" - Marcus Hill.


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From: Nite Hawk
Subject: Re: Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors
Date: 30 Jul 1998 22:35:36
Message: <35C0D9DB.1AA52FB4@mail.minnehaha.pvt.k12.mn.us>
Scott Hill wrote:
> 
> Shane Chambers <sha### [at] wtconet> wrote in article
> <35BD8DCF.ABD9005A@wtco.net>...
> > Hello,
> >
> >
> >     Does POV-RAY (any version, any platform) have support for Multiple
> > Processors?
> 
>         IIRC, none of the official builds do, but there's an unofficial build that
> does, sorry don't recall what it's called, but I think it's for Linux
> platforms only.
> 
> >               Are there any plans to support multiple processors, or
> > distributed processing (say over a network).
> 
>         I believe so...
> --
> Scott Hill
> Sco### [at] DDLinkscouk
> Software Engineer (and all round nice guy)
> 
> "The best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't
> exist..."
>                                                                 - Verbal Kint.
> 
> "the Internet is here so we can waste time talking about nothing in
>  particular when we should be working" - Marcus Hill.

This is called pvm-pov, which uses pvm to distribute the workload over
several computers on a network, which could also work using two clients
on one machine.  It works in linux, and someone a couple months ago
hinted at a NT port, though I have no idea if it ever happend..


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From: Thomas Willhalm
Subject: Re: Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors
Date: 31 Jul 1998 03:20:33
Message: <qqm90lah77z.fsf@goldach.fmi.uni-konstanz.de>
Nite_Hawk <nel### [at] mailminnehahapvtk12mnus> writes:

> Scott Hill wrote:
> > 
> > Shane Chambers <sha### [at] wtconet> wrote in article
> > <35BD8DCF.ABD9005A@wtco.net>...
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > >
> > >     Does POV-RAY (any version, any platform) have support for Multiple
> > > Processors?
> > 
> > IIRC, none of the official builds do, but there's an unofficial build that
> > does, sorry don't recall what it's called, but I think it's for Linux
> > platforms only.
> > 
[...]
> 
> This is called pvm-pov, which uses pvm to distribute the workload over
> several computers on a network, which could also work using two clients
> on one machine.  It works in linux, and someone a couple months ago
> hinted at a NT port, though I have no idea if it ever happend..

Of course, it also works with other flavours of Unix. BTW, the link is:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/6386/PVMPOV.html
In the list of POVBench Results (http://www.haveland.com/povbench/index.htm)
the fastest renderings were done with PVMPOV.

Thomas

-- 
Tho### [at] uni-konstanzde
http://www.informatik.uni-konstanz.de/~willhalm/
Tschieses lavs ju


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From: Nite Hawk
Subject: Re: Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors
Date: 31 Jul 1998 14:57:51
Message: <35C1C011.F565C960@mail.minnehaha.pvt.k12.mn.us>
Thomas Willhalm wrote:
> 
> Nite_Hawk <nel### [at] mailminnehahapvtk12mnus> writes:
> 
> > Scott Hill wrote:
> > >
> > > Shane Chambers <sha### [at] wtconet> wrote in article
> > > <35BD8DCF.ABD9005A@wtco.net>...
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >     Does POV-RAY (any version, any platform) have support for Multiple
> > > > Processors?
> > >
> > > IIRC, none of the official builds do, but there's an unofficial build that
> > > does, sorry don't recall what it's called, but I think it's for Linux
> > > platforms only.
> > >
> [...]
> >
> > This is called pvm-pov, which uses pvm to distribute the workload over
> > several computers on a network, which could also work using two clients
> > on one machine.  It works in linux, and someone a couple months ago
> > hinted at a NT port, though I have no idea if it ever happend..
> 
> Of course, it also works with other flavours of Unix. BTW, the link is:
> http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/6386/PVMPOV.html
> In the list of POVBench Results (http://www.haveland.com/povbench/index.htm)
> the fastest renderings were done with PVMPOV.
> 
> Thomas
> 
> --
> Tho### [at] uni-konstanzde
> http://www.informatik.uni-konstanz.de/~willhalm/
> Tschieses lavs ju

of  course, I should have unix, my mistake. :)


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From: Thomas Willhalm
Subject: Re: Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors
Date: 1 Aug 1998 06:43:41
Message: <qqmww8tavg3.fsf@goldach.fmi.uni-konstanz.de>
Nite_Hawk <nel### [at] mailminnehahapvtk12mnus> writes:

> Thomas Willhalm wrote:
> > 
> > Nite_Hawk <nel### [at] mailminnehahapvtk12mnus> writes:
> > 
> > > Scott Hill wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Shane Chambers <sha### [at] wtconet> wrote in article
> > > > <35BD8DCF.ABD9005A@wtco.net>...
> > > > > Hello,
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Does POV-RAY (any version, any platform) have support for Multiple
> > > > > Processors?
> > > >
> > > > IIRC, none of the official builds do, but there's an unofficial build 
> > > > that does, sorry don't recall what it's called, but I think it's for 
> > > > Linux platforms only.
> > > >
> > [...]
> > >
> > > This is called pvm-pov, which uses pvm to distribute the workload over
> > > several computers on a network, which could also work using two clients
> > > on one machine.  It works in linux, and someone a couple months ago
> > > hinted at a NT port, though I have no idea if it ever happend..
> > 
> > Of course, it also works with other flavours of Unix. BTW, the link is:
> > http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/6386/PVMPOV.html
> 
> of  course, I should have unix, my mistake. :)

Not necessarily. The program that handles different processors and 
machines, namely PVM, is also availible for OS/2 and Win32. 
(ftp://netlib2.cs.utk.edu/pvm3/)
Since the core of POV-Ray is written in ANSI C I don't expect any
problems. A compilation of a command-line version should be simple.
(Oh, non-Unix users aren't used to compile programs :-) )

Thomas

-- 
Tho### [at] uni-konstanzde
http://www.informatik.uni-konstanz.de/~willhalm/
Tschieses lavs ju


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From: Nick Bray
Subject: Re: Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors
Date: 4 Aug 1998 22:20:38
Message: <35C7A44B.1EA41B53@biomed.med.yale.edu>
Shane Chambers wrote:

> Hello,
>
>     Does POV-RAY (any version, any platform) have support for Multiple
> Processors?  Are there any plans to support multiple processors, or
> distributed processing (say over a network).  Which Platform offers the
> fastest version of POV-RAY as far as render speeds go?
>
>     Hey, thanks in Advance,
>
>         -=(*) Shane Chambers (*)=-
>

This is a question I had been thinking about recently. In the docs they say
that getting povray to support multi-processors would be very difficult but
shouldn't this be an easy task as far as NT is concerned? Correct me if I'm
wrong(which is quite likely) but NT handles multiple processors by dividing
the current threads between them. So if you created one thread to trace all
even lines and one to trace all odd lines, the work should be pretty much
divided between the two processors(of course, you can generalize this to
more processors). This would be a relatively simple thing to program so I'm
wondering where the trouble lies. Any help?

                                                            Nick


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From: Ronald L  Parker
Subject: Re: Does POVRAY Support Multiple Processors
Date: 5 Aug 1998 01:09:23
Message: <35c7da31.103655024@news.povray.org>
On Tue, 04 Aug 1998 21:16:11 -0300, Nick Bray
<bra### [at] biomedmedyaleedu> wrote:

>This is a question I had been thinking about recently. In the docs they say
>that getting povray to support multi-processors would be very difficult but
>shouldn't this be an easy task as far as NT is concerned? Correct me if I'm
>wrong(which is quite likely) but NT handles multiple processors by dividing
>the current threads between them. So if you created one thread to trace all
>even lines and one to trace all odd lines, the work should be pretty much
>divided between the two processors(of course, you can generalize this to
>more processors). This would be a relatively simple thing to program so I'm
>wondering where the trouble lies. Any help?

We need a FAQ.

Multithreading is hard to do because POV-Ray uses so many global
variables that you'd have to make thread-local.  If you can find all
of them, it would theoretically be easy, but you'd still have to
interlock access to the frame structure, which might cut performance
severely.


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