MINT/VXF - A High-Performance Computing Framework for Interactive Multimedia

The development of a cross-disciplinary system for immersive, real-time multimedia requires the solution to several challenges simultaneously. Systems for interactive tiled displays range from low-level solutions via ChromiumGL [5] to distributed scene graphs with OpenSG and CGLX [1]. Libraries such as DII and SuperCollider are designed for input device abstraction and audio respectively[6]. However, integrated multimedia systems covering all of these needs while providing built-in, dynamic primitives for interdisciplinary research do not yet exist. We present MINT/VXF, a framework for high-performance visual computing and research in interactive multimedia. Built using the MINT core event system, GameX graphics engine [3], and NVIDIA’s CUDA for hardware-based computing, MINT/VXF introduces a novel scene graph architecture which abstracts GPU-based node evaluation to selectively leverage GPU resources in distributed multimedia systems.