Description: Composition, the organization of elemental operations into a nonobvious whole, is the essence of imperative programming. The instruction set architecture (ISA) of a microprocessor is a versatile composition interface, which programmers of software renderers have used effectively and creatively in their quest for image realism. Early graphics hardware increased rendering performance, but often at a high cost in composability, and thus in programmability and application innovation. Hardware with microproces-sor-like programmability did evolve (for example, the Ikonas Graphics System), but the dominant form of graphics hardware acceleration has been organized around a fixed sequence of rendering operations, often referred to as the graphics pipeline. Early interfaces to these systems such as CORE and later, PHIGS-allowed programmers to specify rendering results, but they were not designed for composition. OpenGL, which I helped to evolve from its Silicon Graphics-defined predecessor IRIS GL in the early 1990s, addressed the need for composability by specifying an architecture (informally called the OpenGL Machine) that was accessed through an imperative programmatic interface. Many features for example, tightly specified semantics; table-driven operations such as stencil and depth-buffer functions; texture mapping exposed as a general 1D, 2D, and 3D lookup function; and required repeatability properties-ensured that programmers could compose OpenGL operations with powerful and reliable results. Some of the useful techniques that OpenGL enabled include texture-based volume rendering, shadow volumes using stencil buffers, and constructive solid geometry algorithms such as capping (the computation of surface planes at the intersections of clipping planes and solid objects defined by polygons). Ultimately, Mark Percy and the coauthors of the SIGGRAPH 2000 paper "Interactive Multi-Pass Programmable Shading" demonstrated that arbitrary RenderMan shaders could be accelerated through the composition of OpenGL rendering operations. During this decade, increases in the raw capability of integrated circuit technology...(from foreword)
Price: 105.99 USD
Location: Victor, New York
End Time: 2024-11-17T16:47:06.000Z
Shipping Cost: 7.63 USD
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Item Specifics
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Features: Illustrated, DVD
Number of Pages: 1008 Pages
Publication Name: GPU Gems 3
Language: English
Publisher: Addison Wesley Professional
Subject: Computer Graphics, Programming / General, Digital Media / Video & Animation
Item Height: 1.6 in
Publication Year: 2007
Type: Textbook
Item Weight: 59.8 Oz
Author: Kurt Akeley
Subject Area: Computers
Item Length: 7.8 in
Item Width: 9.5 in
Format: Trade Paperback / Mixed Lot
