POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.programming : Set small values to 0. : Re: Set small values to 0. Server Time
24 Apr 2024 15:49:55 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Set small values to 0.  
From: DonF
Date: 25 Aug 2020 23:20:01
Message: <web.5f45d45de03bfc80af6fbbee0@news.povray.org>
William F Pokorny <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:


DETAILS:


Description of the SPEC test case:

   POV-Ray is a free and open source ray-tracing application. The CPU2017
   version is based on POV-Ray version 3.7.

   The benchmark renders a 2560 x 2048 pixel image of a chess board, with the
   pieces placed on the board in the starting position. The rendered scene
   image is saved as a Targa (.tga) file.

   This output image is compared with the reference output image using the
   SPEC utility [1]imagevalidate, which calculates a the structural
   similarity (SSIM) index between corresponding 8x8 groups of pixels in each
   image. The SSIM index has a range of -1 (maximal difference) to 1
   (identical). The benchmark requires that all computed SSIM indices be
   greater than 0.996 in order for the run to be considered successful.

   A log of the execution is also generated, but its contents are not used to
   validate correction operation of the benchmark.

   POV-Ray (which became 511.povray_r) was contributed to CPU2017 by one of
   the developers, Thorsten Froehlich, under the GNU Affero License v3.


Performance of SPEC2017 REF sized test case:

  Sample performance difference using Intel compiler on a Skylake system
  with the spec2017 REF size test case, but most compilers on most platforms,
  including x86 or ARM platforms, can see similar large performance differences
  with just this one slight numerical difference in J.

    If J turns out to be zero, or if reset.          218 seconds.
    Without resetting J to zero when close to zero.  349 seconds. 60% slower.

  Both output images validated successfully using the SPEC imagevalidate method,
  but the one output image took much longer to generate.


Input .ini file used for the SPEC2017 REF sized test case:

Width=2560
Height=2048
All_Console=On
All_File=SPEC-benchmark.log
Antialias_Depth=3
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3
Bits_Per_Color=8
Bounding_Threshold=1
Bounding=On
Buffer_Output=Off
Buffer_Size=0
Clock=0
Continue_Trace=Off
Create_Histogram=Off
Cyclic_Animation=Off
Debug_Console=Off
Display=Off
Display_Gamma=1.0
Draw_Vistas=Off
Fatal_Console=On
Fatal_Error_Command=
Fatal_Error_Return=I
Field_Render=Off
Final_Clock=1
Final_Frame=1
Histogram_Name=
Histogram_Grid_Size=0.0
Initial_Clock=0
Initial_Frame=1
Include_Header=
Input_File_Name=SPEC-benchmark-ref.pov
Jitter_Amount=0.30
Jitter=Off
Light_Buffer=On
Odd_Field=Off
Output_Alpha=Off
Output_File_Name=SPEC-benchmark.tga
Output_File_Type=t
Palette=3
Pause_When_Done=Off
Post_Frame_Command=
Post_Frame_Return=I
Post_Scene_Command=
Post_Scene_Return=I
Preview_End_Size=1
Preview_Start_Size=1
Pre_Frame_Command=
Pre_Frame_Return=I
Pre_Scene_command=
Pre_Scene_Return=I
Quality=9
Remove_Bounds=Off
Render_Console=On
Sampling_Method=1
Split_Unions=Off
Statistic_Console=On
Subset_End_Frame=1
Subset_Start_Frame=1
Test_Abort_Count=0
Test_Abort=Off
User_Abort_Command=
User_Abort_Return=I
Verbose=Off
Version=3.5
Video_Mode=0
Vista_Buffer=On
Warning_Console=Off


Description of input .pov:

    // Persistence Of Vision raytracer sample file.
    // POV-Ray scene description for chess board.
    // By Ville Saari
    // Copyright (c) 1991 Ferry Island Pixelboys
    //
    // This scene has 430 primitives in objects and 41 in bounding shapes and
    // it takes over 40 hours to render by standard amiga.
    //
    // If you do some nice modifications or additions to this file, please send
    // me a copy. My Internet address is:  vsa### [at] niksulahutfi
    //
    // -w320 -h240
    // -w800 -h600 +a0.3

    // Note : CHESS2.POV was created from Ville Saari's chess.pov
    // -- Dan Farmer 1996
    //  - Cchanged textures
    //  - Added camera blur and changed focal length
    //  - Use sky sphere
    //  - Modularized the code
    //  - Added felt pads to bottom of pieces

    // remaining manual bounding commented out by Bob Hughes, August 31, 2001


Execution Trace:

  With my own little debug trace through the Compute_Quadric_BBox() routine of
  file quadrics.cpp using the SPEC test case, I see 19 calls to the
  Compute_Quadric_BBox() routine.

  All calls to Compute_Quadric_BBox() execute one of the many
  "Check for xxxxxxx (?-axis)" code blocks, EXCEPT the one case where
  "J is recalculated, ends up being close to zero, but not quite zero,
  and is not reset". In this one case, none of the "Check ..." code blocks are
  executed, the "Add translation" and the "Beware of bounding boxes to large"
  are executed, and large values for BBox.Lengths the BBox.Lower_Left values
  are used.


  Executed code when J is "recalculated" and ends up being exactly equal to
  0.0 (or is reset to zero if close) for the 1 of 19 cases that differed:

    J was recalculated to J=4.440892e-16,
    and then reset to 0.0 with modified code I added.

      Check for cone (y-axis).
      Add translation.
      Quadric->BBox.Lengths 0 to 2:     4.333333 3.500000  4.333333
      Quadric->BBox.Lower_Left 0 to 2: -2.166667 8.000000 -2.166667


  Executed code when J is "recalculated" and ends up NOT quite being exactly
  equal to 0.0:

      Add translation.
      Beware of bounding boxes to large.
      Quadric->BBox.Lengths 0 to 2:     20000000000.000000  20000000000.000000
20000000000.000000
      Quadric->BBox.Lower_Left 0 to 2: -10000000000.000000 -10000000000.000000
-10000000000.000000

  For the faster executing run, note that the "Beware of bounding boxes to
  large" code block is still executed for 8 of the 19 calls to
  Compute_Quadric_BBox(), and even when "Beware of bounding boxes to large"
  is NOT called, the large BBox values may be still be set or inherited.
  For this faster test case, 12 of the 19 calls to
  Compute_Quadric_BBox() ended up with large BBox values, so having the
  large BBox values is not unusual, but for the one call where J was not
  reset when perhaps it could/should have been reset, the large BBox values
  were one of the differences encountered between the slower and faster
  runs.


Portion of log file results (not used for SPEC verification) for the
fast and slow execution.

  Fast execution with recalculated J reset to zero when it is close to zero:
  218 seconds.

    Image Resolution 2560 x 2048
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Pixels:          5242880   Samples:        56705552   Smpls/Pxl: 10.82
    Rays:          114705211   Saved:           1162288   Max Level: 5/5
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ray->Shape Intersection          Tests       Succeeded  Percentage
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Box                           16019108        16019107    100.00
    Cone/Cylinder                 12818313         3292990     25.69
    CSG Intersection            1100588845       111370367     10.12
    CSG Union                     88374684        76631294     86.71
    Plane                       4514922317      2468835793     54.68
    Quadric                      330552192       175746735     53.17
    Sphere                       289188952        70116199     24.25
    Bounding Box                2485773879       745702120     30.00
    Light Buffer                1823322702      1064180254     58.36
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------


  Slow execution with recalculated J NOT reset to zero when it was close
  to zero: 349 seconds.

       Note the large increase in "Tests" for many of the
       "Ray->Shape Intersestion" values, such as CSG Intersection, Plane,
       Quadric, and Sphere, (flagged with **) which presumably
       results in the large increase in execution time.

    Image Resolution 2560 x 2048
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Pixels:          5242880   Samples:        56705552   Smpls/Pxl: 10.82
    Rays:          114705211   Saved:           1162288   Max Level: 5/5
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ray->Shape Intersection          Tests       Succeeded  Percentage
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Box                           16019108        16019107    100.00
    Cone/Cylinder                 12818313         3292990     25.69
    CSG Intersection            2573044515**     113104449      4.40
    CSG Union                     88374684        76631294     86.71
    Plane                       5987377987**    3804982796     63.55
    Quadric                     1066780027**     285487345     26.76
    Sphere                      9123922972**      73475346      0.81
    Bounding Box                2368729644       732816314     30.94
    Light Buffer                2057730695      1350487574     65.63
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------



> My quick take is those initial EPSILONs (1e-10 in POV-Ray) should be
> more like what I'm using in my personal povr branch (gkDBL_epsilon at
> ~ 4.4e-16)

Based on my observations, 4.4e-16 might be a little too restrictive to catch
many of the obvious "close to zero values". An EPSILON of 1e-10 may,
or may not, be too lax, but I think 4.4e-16 would be too restrictive.
The recalculated values of J that were not close to zero for this case,
and hence didn't need to be reset were either -1.0, or already 0.0.


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