Feature: Unlocking Processing Potential: Randi Rost On CPU-Based Graphics Architecture
The latest Gamasutra visual computing interview shines the spotlight on Intel Graphics' external relations manager Randi Rost, a 25-year development veteran instrumental in the company's graphics hardware efforts.
One of Rost's focuses is lowering the barrier of entry to development with graphics hardware, a goal achieved in part by working directly with universities to get feedback and provide training. In this excerpt he discusses the importance of that angle:
"Randi Rost: Universities are where a lot of new technology gets dreamed up, where new algorithms get invented. Universities, particularly in the visual computing space, have been relatively shackled by the existing graphics hardware capabilities-where the entire rendering pipeline has been built into fixed-functionality silicon.
"This provides scant flexibility for researchers to innovate in term of rendering algorithms. Recently, within the last half-dozen years, the hardware pipeline has gotten to be more programmable, but there are still a lot of constraints.
"With our upcoming graphics architecture, built around a completely general-purpose CPU-based design, we're basically removing all the constraints for the rendering pipeline. We're telling researchers: 'Hey, here's an architecture where you can effectively do everything you want in software. There's no fixed functionality to get in your way. If you want to experiment with new rendering algorithms, with ray tracing, with hybrid rendering systems, if you want to replace the rasterization unit, if you want to have procedural geometry so that you can render spheres analytically (rather than breaking them down into polygons)-all of those things are possible.'
"It's a completely open, general, high-performance platform for highly parallel floating-point workloads, such as graphics. And, the basic programming model is simple: C++ code that targets x86 cores."
Rost goes on to discuss the opportunities this presents in hiring talent, and the importance of preparing the next generation of developers for the increasingly complex world of graphics hardware. You can read the full interview (no registration required; please feel free to link to this feature from other websites).
