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Paper: Hybrid Parallelism for Volume Rendering on Large, Multi-core Systems
Volume: 444, 5th International Conference of Numerical Modeling of Space Plasma Flows (ASTRONUM 2010)
Page: 275
Authors: Howison, M.; Bethel, E. W.; Childs, H.
Abstract: This work studies the performance and scalability characteristics of “hybrid” parallel programming and execution as applied to raycasting volume rendering – a staple visualization algorithm – on a large, multi-core platform. Historically, the Message Passing Interface (MPI) has become the de-facto standard for parallel programming and execution on modern parallel systems. As the computing industry trends towards multi-core processors, with four- and six-core chips common today, as well as processors capable of running hundreds of concurrent threads (GPUs), we wish to better understand how algorithmic and parallel programming choices impact performance and scalability on large, distributed-memory multi-core systems. Our findings indicate that the hybrid-parallel implementation, at levels of concurrency ranging from 1,728 to 216,000, performs better, uses a smaller absolute memory footprint, and consumes less communication bandwidth than the traditional, MPI-only implementation.
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