The WarpEngine: An Architecture for the Post-Polygonal Age
Voicu Popescu, John Eyles, Anselmo Lastra, Joshua Steinhurst, Nick
England, Lars Nyland
ABSTRACT
We present the WarpEngine, an architecture designed for real-time image-based
rendering of natural scenes from arbitrary viewpoints. The modeling primitives
are real-world images with per-pixel depth. Currently they are acquired
and stored off-line; in the near future real-time depth-image acquisition
will be possible, and WarpEngine is designed to render in immediate mode
from such data sources. The depth-image resolution is locally adapted by
interpolation to match the resolution of the output image. 3D warping can
occur either before or after the interpolation; the resulting warped/interpolated
samples are forward-mapped into a warp buffer, with the precise locations
recorded using an offset. Warping processors are integrated on-chip with
the warp buffer, allowing efficient, scalable implementation of very high
performance systems. Each chip will be able to process 100 million samples
per second and provide 4.8GigaBytes per second of bandwidth to the warp
buffer. The WarpEngine is significantly less complex than our previous
efforts, incorporating only a single ASIC design. Small configurations
can be packaged as a PC add-in card, while larger deskside configurations
will provide HDTV resolutions at 50 Hz, enabling radical new applications
such as 3D television. WarpEngine will be highly programmable, facilitating
use as a test-bed for experimental IBR algorithms.
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