Chromium Renderserver: Scalable and Open Remote Rendering Infrastructure

Author

Paul, Brian ; Ahern, Sean ; Bethel, E. Wes ; Brugger, Eric ; Cook, Rich ; Daniel, Jamison ; Lewis, Ken ; Owen, Jens ; Southard, Dale

Author_Institution

Tungsten Graphics, Inc.,, Steamboat Springs

Volume

14

Issue

3

fYear

2008

Firstpage

627

Lastpage

639

Abstract

Chromium Renderserver (CRRS) is a software infrastructure that provides the ability for one or more users to run and view image output from unmodified, interactive OpenGL and X11 applications on a remote parallel computational platform equipped with graphics hardware accelerators via industry-standard Layer-7 network protocols and client viewers. The new contributions of this work include a solution to the problem of synchronizing X11 and OpenGL command streams, remote delivery of parallel hardware-accelerated rendering, and a performance analysis of several different optimizations that are generally applicable to a variety of rendering architectures. CRRS is fully operational, open source software.

Keywords

parallel processing; public domain software; rendering (computer graphics); software architecture; chromium renderserver; client viewers; graphics hardware accelerators; industry-standard layer-7 network protocols; interactive OpenGL; open remote rendering infrastructure; open source software; remote parallel computational platform; rendering architectures; scalable remote rendering infrastructure; software infrastructure; collaborative visualization; distance visualization; parallel rendering; remote rendering; remote visualization; virtual network computer; Algorithms; Computer Graphics; Image Enhancement; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Information Storage and Retrieval; Internet; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Software;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1077-2626

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TVCG.2007.70631

Filename

4459319