research-article

Rodent: generating renderers without writing a generator

Authors:

Arsène Pérard-Gayot,

Richard Membarth,

Sebastian Hack,

Philipp SlusallekAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Volume 38, Issue 4

Article No.: 40, Pages 1 - 12

https://doi.org/10.1145/3306346.3322955

Published: 12 July 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Monte-Carlo Renderers must generate many color samples to produce a noise-free image, and for each of those, they must evaluate complex mathematical models representing the appearance of the objects in the scene. These models are usually in the form of shaders: Small programs that are executed during rendering in order to compute a value for the current sample.

Renderers often compile and optimize shaders just before rendering, taking advantage of the knowledge of the scene. In principle, the entire renderer could benefit from a-priori code generation. For instance, scheduling can take advantage of the knowledge of the scene in order to maximize hardware usage. However, writing such a configurable renderer eventually means writing a compiler that translates a scene description into machine code.

In this paper, we present a framework that allows generating entire renderers for CPUs and GPUs without having to write a dedicated compiler: First, we provide a rendering library in a functional/imperative language that elegantly abstracts the individual rendering concepts using higher-order functions. Second, we use partial evaluation to combine and specialize the individual components of a renderer according to a particular scene.

Our results show that the renderers we generate outperform equivalent high-performance implementations written with state-of-the-art ray tracing libraries on the CPU and GPU.

Supplementary Material

ZIP File (repository.zip)

Rodent is a BVH traversal library and renderer implemented using the AnyDSL compiler framework (https://anydsl.github.io/).

The code is also available on GitHub: https://github.com/AnyDSL/rodent/releases/download/siggraph19/rodent_installer.zip

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Cited By

Meister DKulkarni PVasishta AHarada T(2024)HIPRT: A Ray Tracing Framework in HIPProceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques10.1145/36753787:3(1-18)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675378
Xu XWang LPérard-Gayot AMembarth RLi CYang CSlusallek P(2024)Temporal Coherence-Based Distributed Ray Tracing of Massive ScenesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2022.321998230:2(1489-1501)Online publication date: Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2022.3219982
Yang JDev SCampbell A(2024)RenderKernel: High-level programming for real-time rendering systemsVisual Informatics10.1016/j.visinf.2024.09.0048:3(82-95)Online publication date: Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visinf.2024.09.004
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Index Terms

Rodent: generating renderers without writing a generator
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics
    1. Rendering
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Graphics

ACM Transactions on Graphics Volume 38, Issue 4

August 2019

1480 pages

ISSN:0730-0301

EISSN:1557-7368

DOI:10.1145/3306346

Editor:
Olga Sorkine-Hornung
ETH Zurich

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Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 12 July 2019

Published in TOG Volume 38, Issue 4

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Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
Universität des Saarlandes

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Cited By

Meister DKulkarni PVasishta AHarada T(2024)HIPRT: A Ray Tracing Framework in HIPProceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques10.1145/36753787:3(1-18)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675378
Xu XWang LPérard-Gayot AMembarth RLi CYang CSlusallek P(2024)Temporal Coherence-Based Distributed Ray Tracing of Massive ScenesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2022.321998230:2(1489-1501)Online publication date: Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2022.3219982
Yang JDev SCampbell A(2024)RenderKernel: High-level programming for real-time rendering systemsVisual Informatics10.1016/j.visinf.2024.09.0048:3(82-95)Online publication date: Sep-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visinf.2024.09.004
Bangaru SWu LLi TMunkberg JBernstein GRagan-Kelley JDurand FLefohn AHe Y(2023)SLANG.D: Fast, Modular and Differentiable Shader ProgrammingACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/361835342:6(1-28)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3618353
Kemmer THack SSchmidt BHildebrandt A(2023)CUDA-accelerated protein electrostatics in linear spaceJournal of Computational Science10.1016/j.jocs.2023.10202270(102022)Online publication date: Jun-2023
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Zheng SZhou ZChen XYan DZhang CGeng YGu YXu K(2022)LuisaRenderACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3550454.355546341:6(1-19)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2022
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Seitz KFoley TPorumbescu SOwens J(2022)Supporting Unified Shader Specialization by Co-opting C++ FeaturesProceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques10.1145/35438665:3(1-17)Online publication date: 27-Jul-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543866
Li WMa YLiu XDesbrun M(2022)Efficient kinetic simulation of two-phase flowsACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3528223.353013241:4(1-17)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2022
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Jakob WSpeierer SRoussel NVicini D(2022)DR.JITACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3528223.353009941:4(1-19)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2022
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Salaün CGruson AHua BHachisuka TSingh G(2022)Regression-based Monte Carlo integrationACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3528223.353009541:4(1-14)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2022
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