Active Pixel Merging on Hypercube Multicomputers

This paper presents algorithms developed for pixel merging phase of object space parallel polygon rendering on hypercube connected multicomputers These algorithms reduce volume of communication in pixel merging phase by only exchanging local foremost pixels In order to avoid message fragmentation local foremost pixels should be stored in consecutive memory locations An algorithm called modi ed scanline z bu er is proposed to store local foremost pixels e ciently This algo rithm also avoids the initialization of scanline z bu er for each scanline on the screen Good processor utilization is achieved by subdividing the image space among the processors in pixel merging phase E cient algo rithms for load balancing in the pixel merging phase are also proposed and presented Experimental results obtained on a processor Intel s iPSC hypercube multicomputer are presented