Object-space parallel processing of the multipass rendering method on the (Mπ)² with a distributed-frame buffer system

The multipass rendering method based on the global illumination model can generate the most photo-realistic images. However, since the multipass rendering method is very time consuming, it is impractical in the industrial world. This paper discusses a massively parallel processing approach to fast image synthesis by the multipass rendering method. Especially, we focus on the performance evaluation of the view-dependent object-space parallel processing on the (Mπ)² which has been proposed in our previous paper. We also propose two kinds of distributed frame buffer system named cached frame buffer and multistage-interconnected frame buffer. These frame buffer systems can solve the access conflict problem on the frame buffer. The simulation results show that the (Mπ)² has a scalable performance. For example, the (Mπ)² with more than 4000 processing elements can achieve an efficiency of over 50%. We also show that both of the proposed distributed frame buffer systems can relieve the overhead due to frame buffer access in the (Mπ)² in the case that a large number of high-performance processing elements are adopted in the system.