Tyan Tiger & non-MP Athlons

[Jakob Østergaard]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 06:07:37PM +1100, Drake Diedrich wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 04:54:22PM +0100, Frank Joerdens wrote:
> > 
> > than the Athlon. If this has anything to do with the PIV's faster Rambus
> > memory, it'd mean that rendering is *strongly* memory bound.
> 
>    It may be.  povray (the classic free-beer raytracer) runs all over memory
> chasing lists of objects, almost exactly like an optimizing compiler does.
> (not surprisingly, since both are parsing languages).  Floating point
> calculations (calculating intersections between rays and objects) are a
> fairly unimportant part of the load.  Different rendering programs might be
> better optimized towards memory use, but I suspect on complex scenes this
> will be the common performance limit for any rendering software package.

That's for raytracing.  Radiosity is almost exclusively a solution of a system
of linear equations.

I suppose modern rendering packages would use some combination of raytracing
(for highlights, refraction etc.) and radiosity (for colour bleeding etc.).

-- 
................................................................
:   jakob at unthought.net   : And I see the elder races,         :
:.........................: putrid forms of man                :
:   Jakob Østergaard      : See him rise and claim the earth,  :
:        OZ9ABN           : his downfall is at hand.           :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............: