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Date: Sun, 2 Oct 1994 12:58:41 -0700
From: Craig Wittenbrink <craig@cse.ucsc.edu>
Message-Id: <199410021958.MAA05213@arapaho.cse.ucsc.edu>
To: mp-render@icase.edu
Subject: FAQ posting
Status: RO

All: Here's an updated version of the mp-render FAQ, which Brian Corrie
(bcorrie@csr.uvic.ca) had been previously maintaining. The FAQ has 
been updated to include information about new publication forums 
for parallel rendering, new conferences and meetings planned, and 
also a summary of more recent activity within the mp-render group.

	If you have comments or appropriate information, forward them to
me, and I will incorporate them into the next version of the FAQ.

	Regards

	Craig M. Wittenbrink
	U.C. Santa Cruz

==============================================================================
         Frequently Asked Questions for the Massively Parallel Rendering
                          (mp-render) mailing list.
 

                      Last modified: October 2, 1994
 


 Archive name : mp-render.faq
 Availability : anonymous ftp from ftp.cse.ucsc.edu
                directory /pub/mp-render, file mp-render.faq
                previous site: bellatrix.anu.edu.au [150.203.23.14]
 Maintainer   : 
                Craig M. Wittenbrink (craig@cse.ucsc.edu)
                prior maintainer: Brian Corrie (bcorrie@cs.anu.edu.au)
 


 This message contains general information about the mp-render mailing list
 as well as specific information about frequently discussed topics in this
 forum. Feel free to redistribute this archive.
 
 The start of each topic line in the body of the FAQ contains the 
 characters ``TOPIC'' so these lines can be found easily. 

 The topics summarized in this FAQ message are:
 
     0)  Charter of the mp-render mailing list
     1)  Subscription to the mp-render mailing list
     2)  mp-render participant directory
     3)  mp-render bibliographies
     4)  Related mailing lists, news groups, and other resources
     5)  PhD's in mp-rendering
     6)  Journals and conferences for mp-rendering
     7)  mp-render SIGGRAPH 92, SIGGRAPH 93, SIGGRAPH 94 meeting minutes
     8)  Parallel Rendering Symposium '93 summary
     9)  Parallel Rendering Symposium '95 plans
 


 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TOPIC 0) Charter of the mp-render mailing list
 
 The original Usenet posting, made by Tom Crockett at ICASE, about the
 mp-render mailing list contained the following straightforward charter:
 
 ``A mailing list has been set up for discussion of issues related to rendering 
 and visualization on massively parallel systems''. 
 
 Comments or suggestions on modifying the charter are welcome, but in its
 broad form at the moment it seems adequate for what the participants of the
 mp-render list have a need for.
 
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TOPIC 1) Subscription to the mp-render mailing list
  
 A mailing list has been set up for discussion of issues related to rendering 
 and visualization on massively parallel systems.
 
 Subscription requests should be sent to
 
 	mp-render-request@icase.edu
 
 Contributions should be sent to
 
 	mp-render@icase.edu
 
 Please make sure that you send only contributions to mp-render@icase.edu
 Administrative comments and list subscription/deletion requests
 should be sent to mp-render-request@icase.edu, NOT mp-render@icase.edu.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TOPIC 2) mp-render participant directory
 
 A directory of participants in the mp-render mailing list has been set
 up by Michael Cox at Princeton. A copy of the directory is available
 by anonymous ftp from princeton.edu. You can retrieve the directory
 as follows (system responses are in "", you type in the rest).
 
 	ftp princeton.edu
 	"lots of stuff..."
 	"Name (your.org:yourlogin):" anonymous
 	"Password:" yourlogin@your.org
 
 	"ftp>" cd pub/mp-render
 	"ftp>" get directory
 	"ftp>" quit
 
 You can be added to this directory or correct your entry to the directory
 by sending email to Michael Cox at mbc@fs.Princeton.EDU. To be added to
 the directory, you should fill in the following template with the pertinent
 details that describe you and your interests, and delete the details that
 are not relevant. Send the completed template to Michael.
 
 
 Name:
 Email:
 Organization:
 
 Machine type(s):
 	MIMD
 	SIMD
 	Pipelined
 
 Machines:
 	Butterfly
 	CM-200
 	CM2
 	CM5
 	Cogent
 	Cray
 	Delta
 	Distributed Array Processor (DAP)
 	Firefly
 	Maspar
 	Meiko Computing Surface
 	Monsoon (dataflow)
 	Network Clusters
 	Paragon
 	Parsys
 	Parsytec
 	SPARC
 	Sigma
 	Touchstone
 	Transputer
 	VME CPU clusters
 	Wizard i860
 	i860 MIMD
 	iPSC
 	iWARP
 
 Areas:
 	algorithms
 	animation
 	architecture
 	concurrency
 	distributed visualization
 	global illumination
 	massive lighting systems (eg theatre rigs)
 	modeling
 	networked graphics
 	porting
 	rendering
 	scientific visualization
 	systems (e.g. decomposition, memory utilization, load balancing)
 	user interfaces
 	video
 	virtual reality
 	volume rendering
 
 Involvement:
 	analyst
 	architect
 	buyer
 	developer
 	interested
 	manager
 	researcher
 	user
 
 Algorithms:
 	csg
 	image-parallel
 	lighting
 	marching cubes
 	morphing
 	object-parallel
 	particle tracing
 	pipelining
 	radiosity
 	ray-casting
 	raytracing
 	scanline
 	shading
 	shadows
 	warping
 
 Packages:
 	AVS
 	DGL
 	Explorer
 	Express
 	Express
 	FAST
 	GL
 	GO||
 	ISIS
 	Inventor
 	Khoros
 	Motif
 	NCSA tools
 	OpenGL
 	PVM (CM-2/Cray link)
 	Plotix
 	RenderMan
 	SciAn
 	X
 	XGL
 	apE
 	homegrown
 	rayshade
 	renderer
 
 Adjectives:
 	distributed
 	hierarchical
 	high-speed
 	high-volume (e.g. large datasets)
 	interactive
 	large science
 	networked
 	object-oriented
 	photorealistic
 	realtime
 	time-dependent
 
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TOPIC 3) mp-render bibliographies
 
 Three bibliographies citing papers on mp-rendering are available for
 anonymous ftp. They cite papers on the topics of parallel volume
 visualization, parallel ray tracing, and other parallel rendering
 techniques.
 
 The bibliography on parallel volume rendering is being maintained by
 Ulrich Neumann (uneumann@usc.edu). Scott Whitman (slim@llnl.gov)
 is maintaining the other two bibliographies. Their calls for citations and
 announcements of availability follow:
 
 >From: Ulrich Neumann 
 >To: mp-render@icase.edu
 >TOPIC Call for biblio citations
 >
 >At the siggraph BOF I agreed to create a bibliography of references
 >about parallel volume rendering.  Let's define "parallel volume rendering"
 >broadly as methods for visualizing volumetric data that make use of parallel 
 >architectures.  
 >
 >A while back I posted details about how to contribute to this bibliography.
 >Let me ask again that you submit.  There must be more people out there who
 >have done work in this area.  I especially encourage tech reports or 
 >unpublished "war-stories" about implementations.  These sort of items 
 >are very hard to find out about and often valuable to someone about
 >to embark on an implementation.  Just put an abstract together outlining
 >what was done and interested parties can contact you directly for more
 >details.
 >
 >Citations should be in a consistent format (if possible) that looks like:
 >
 >	List of Authors 
 >	Full Paper Title 
 >	Source Description (Journal or Conference or TechReport, etc.)
 >		-include the volume and issue number if applicable
 >		-include the date published
 >		-include the start and end page numbers if applicable
 >	Abstract (optional, but very desirable)
 >	Contact person(s)	(email address and/or ftp for online document)
 >
 >Citations should be mailed to me (*not mp-render*) at
 >
 >	uneumann@usc.edu   with a subject line of "bibliography".  
 >
 >
 >The list is updated every now and then (depending on submissions)
 >and available as a file called "biblio" by anonymous ftp from
 >
 >	ftp.cs.unc.edu  in the directory  /unc/ftp/pub/volume_biblio
 >
 >This ftp site is read-only to the outside world.  You can't place anything in
 >that file or directory yourself.
 >
 >-Thank you
 >
 >/--------------------------------------------------------------------------/
 >		University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
 >Ulrich Neumann		neumann@usc.edu		
 >/--------------------------------------------------------------------------/
 >

*** NOTE: Ulrich has moved to the Univ. of Southern California and can
*** be contacted through the e-mail given. The bibliography is still at
*** this time at UNC, but may be moved.
 
 >From: slim@ocfkms.llnl.gov (Scott Whitman)
 >To: mp-render@icase.edu
 >TOPIC available for anonymous ftp
 >
 >Are two bibliographies (in the works) on parallel rendering.  One is devoted
 >to ray tracing and the other is other rendering methods (including some
 >articles about architectures).  I don't have time to update *all*of the 
 >articles I know about in it but if you have anything you'd like to add, let
 >me know.  In any case, these can be accessed through anonymous ftp at:
 >
 >ocfkms.llnl.gov: pub/graphics
 >
 >(the IP address is 128.115.1.171)
 >
 >The format is bibtex format and can be accessed through lookbib and related
 >programs.  One advantage to this is that you add these directly to your
 >own reference list for bibliographies in latex.
 >
 >	
 >--------------------------------------------------------
 >Scott R. Whitman, Ph.D.		slim@llnl.gov
 >LLNL, L-416, P.O. Box 808	(510) 294-4109
 >Livermore, CA 94550		
 
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TOPIC 4) Related mailing lists, news groups, and other resources
  
 I am sure there are many mailing lists that might be of interest that are
 missing here. If anyone knows of any, please let me know.
 
 Mailing lists		Contact			Topics
 =============		=======			======
 
 visisig@sdsc.edu	frost@sdsc.edu		Visualization
  			(Richard Frost)		Intel Supercomputers
 
 advcompvis@sdsc.edu	todd@sdsc.edu		Visualization software
  			(Todd Elvins)		Visualization issues
 
 ozviz@anusf.anu.edu.au	drw900@anusf.anu.edu.au Visualization in Australia
  			(Drew Whitehouse)
 
 Usenet news groups		Comments
 ==================		========
 
 comp.graphics			Discussion of graphics - FAQ available
 comp.graphics.research		Research oriented discussions of graphics
 comp.graphics.visualization	Discussions about visualization
 comp.graphics.avs		Discussions about the AVS visualization package
 comp.graphics.explorer		Discussions about the explorer vis package
 comp.graphics.animation	Discussions about graphics and animation
 comp.graphics.gnuplot		Discussions about the gnuplot package
 comp.graphics.opengl		Discussions about the opengl graphics library
 comp.parallel			Discussions about parallel architectures
 comp.arch			Discussions about computer architectures
 comp.arch.storage		Discussions about data storage architectures
 comp.soft-sys.khoros		Discussions about the Khoros image processing
 				package
 
 Other resources
 ===============
 
 netlib@ornl.gov:
   Send a message to the above address containing the words
       ``send index from meetings''
   to retrieve a list of upcoming conferences that deal with
   advanced and parallel computing. You can send a message
   containing the words
       ``send index''
   to get a comprehensive list of other resources that netlib
   provides.

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TOPIC 5) PhD's in mp-rendering
  
 University			Information
 ==========			===========
 
 Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, MasPar MP-2 (4096 nodes), Reality Engine 2
    contact: Gopher site: gopher.cse.ucsc.edu.

 University of North Carolina	Delta, Paragon, Touchstone, i860, Pixel-Planes
 Chapel Hill			Contact: admit@cs.unc.edu
  
 Princeton			CM5, Paragon
  
 Stanford			Dash Multiprocessor
 
 University of Edinburgh	CM-200, i860, DAP, Meiko, Transputers
 
 University of Southampton

 University of Washington, Paragon, Proteus (40 nodes), KSR-1 (50 nodes), 
   MasPar MP-1 (1k nodes), IPSC-2 (32 nodes), Sequent Symmetry (32 nodes)
   contact: somani@cs.washington.edu, somani@ee.washington.edu
 
 University of Bath

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TOPIC 6) Journals and conferences for mp-rendering
 
 A list of journals and conferences that deal with mp-rendering
 in some form or another is difficult to put together, as many results
 are published in application specific journals rather than rendering
 journals. For this reason, any input that people have on where information
 or possible places for publication can be found will be greatly appreciated.
 In addition to the journals listed below, the conference proceedings and
 the proceedings for the associated workshops and courses are often very
 good sources of information. University and research lab technical reports
 are also valuable sources of information (see the bibliographies for
 many references like these).
 
 Books
 =====
 
 P. Dew, R. Earnshaw, and T. Heywood, ``Parallel Processing for Computer
 Vision and Display'', Addison Wesley, 1989.
  
 Foley, VanDam, Feiner, and Hughes, Computer Graphics Principles and
 Practice, Second Edition, Reading MA: Addison Wesley Inc. 1990. 

 Arie E. Kaufman, "Volume Visualization", IEEE Press.

 Computer Image Generation, Edited by Bruce J. Schachter,
 Wiley Interscience, 1983.

 S. Whitman, ``Multiprocessor methods for Computer Graphics Rendering''
 Jones and Bartlett, Boston, MA, 1992.
 
 Journals and other publications
 ===============================
 IEEE Transactions on Graphics and Visualization (new) quarterly
 ACM Transactions on Graphics, quarterly
 IEEE Computer
 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (magazine) bimonthly
 IEEE Parallel and Distributed Technology (magazine) (new '94)
 Computer Graphics Forum
 Computers and Graphics
 Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
 
 Conferences					Where & When
 ===========					============
 ACM SIGGRAPH 95				Los Angeles, CA
 							    , 1995
 
 ASE 95                         Milan, Italy
 (... application of high-perf. June 19-21, 1995
  computing in engineering ...)

 Visualization 94               Washington, D.C. 
 						        October 17-21, 1994
 Visualization 95				Atlanta, GA
 
 Graphics Interface 95				?????
 
 Eurographics 94				?????
 Eurographics 95				?????
 
 Super Computing 95				San Diego, CA
                                Dec. 4-8, 1995
                                (ACM Sigarch and IEEE C.S.)

 Symposium on Electronic Imaging San Jose, CA
 Science and Technology          Feb. 5-10, 1995 (IS&T and SPIE)
 
 International Conference on Supercomputing     ?????
 
 International Parallel         Santa Barbara, CA
 Processing Symposium           May, 1995

 International Conference for Computer Vision   ?????
 and Display
 
 Vol. Vis '94                   Washington, D.C. (sub-event of Vis'94)
                                Oct. 17-18, 1994

 VRAIS 95                       Research Triangle Park, NC
                                March 11-15, 1995
 
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 TOPIC 7) mp-render SIGGRAPH 92 meeting minutes
 
 From: slim@tazdevil.llnl.gov (Scott Whitman)
 To: mp-render@icase.edu
 Subject: minutes of the meeting
 
 
 Here is a brief overview of the meeting at Siggraph '92:
 
 Approximately 50 people attended the meeting.
 	
 Workshop:
 
 We are attempting to coordinate the workshop but we haven't nailed down any
 details yet.  There is a possibility of scheduling it for next spring or
 in coordination with Visualization '93 (similar to the Vol. Viz. workshop
 coordinated with Viz. '92) in the fall of 1993.  The appeal of the latter is
 that it is possible that additional people could justify travel support
 for a workshop if it was piggybacked onto a conference.  We also were thinking
 about piggybacking to Supercomputing '93 but for various reasons, Viz. '93
 seems to be the better choice for the moment.  Our intention (for the moment)
 is to limit this workshop to 50-100 people so we can all meet each other
 and have worthwhile discussions.
 
 Siggraph will allow us to use their name attached to the conference but it
 seems that currently they have a severe lack of funding problem.  It was
 reported that if we (or through our supporting organizations) could come up
 with $20K, they would publish the proceedings and send it out to the regular
 Siggraph membership.  We felt this figure was very reasonable but several
 people questioned whether it was in fact valid.  
 
 IEEE CG&A has a policy of constructing special issues (40 pages) on a single
 topic.  In order for us to obtain an issue, a proposal needs to be submitted.
 The thought here was that the best 5 or 6 papers from the workshop would be
 printed in this issue.  This was done in the current issue of CG&A for
 Viz. '91.  However, the next available time slot is not until July '94.  This
 might not be bad if we end up using Viz. '93 as our piggybacked conference.
 
 [Editors note: The date and location have been finalized for this workshop.
  It is being held in conjunction with Visualization '93 in San Jose,
  California, on October 25-26, 1993. The call for participation is available
  from the same location as this FAQ. See the ftp directions at the top of
  this file for the site details.   B]
 
 Publishing:
 
 See above.  There wasn't much explicit discussion on this topic.
 
 Collaborations:
 
 Well, no formal discussions ensued but it seems that various people met
 others of like ilk during the informal discussions.  Hopefully something
 will come out of these.
 
 Access to Parallel Machines:
 
 Jeff Jortner (jnjortn@cs.sandia.gov) mentioned that Sandia might be able
 to provide access to parallel machines (nCUBE and iPSC, I think) for
 people who needed it.  Herb Taylor (herbt@apollo.sarnoff.com) said there
 might be time available on the Princeton Engine at NIST.  I believe various
 other DOE sites (including Argonne and Livermore) will also provide access
 to machines based on acceptance of a short proposal of the work.
 
 Format of the Group:
 
 It was brought up what the charter of this mailing group is.  Well, I guess
 it is whatever we want it to be.  A point was made that it should not focus
 strictly on rendering, but also on parallel visualization.  The group is not
 limited to rendering, then, but to using parallelism throughout the image
 display process.  Most people were interested or are currently doing research
 in this field.
 
 Bibliography:
 
 Ulrich Neumann volunteered to be the clearinghouse for articles on parallel
 volume rendering.  I'll let Ulrich send out info how he wants to handle this.
 I've volunteered to collect articles for parallel image space rendering (i.e.
 non ray-traced, non radiosity).  However, I do have a fairly decent collection
 of articles in both of the other areas.  Currently, I've either got articles
 in hardcopy form or lists of articles in electronic format.  Everything is not
 in exactly the same format, however.  One possibility would be using the
 bibtex format.  In fact, Eugene Miya's bibliography would probably be a
 good starting point for both of these bibliographies.  We could extract the
 entries that are relevant (so as not to type them in again) and then update
 it with our own entries.  In addition, as various people publish works in the
 field, they could send us their entry.  Of course, this is an idealized
 circumstance.  I think a key is that we try to collect the hardcopies of these
 papers (especially the more obscure ones that are hard to obtain).  This
 will allow others to actually get a paper even if they can't find it in their
 local library.
 
 Any more thoughts on this would be appreciated (I was just spouting off the
 top of my head).  Of course, abstracts or reviews of the articles would
 probably also be nice.  In addition, do we have a volunteer for collecting
 articles on parallel object space rendering, ray tracing, radiosity, and any
 other areas?
 
 -------------
 
 	-Scott
 
 

 There were Birds-of-a-feather meetings at SIGGRAPH '93 and SIGGRAPH '94,
 and anyone wishing to submit a synopsis, please send it to the FAQ 
 maintainer.

 TOPIC 8) Parallel Rendering Symposium 93 synopsis

 The Parallel Rendering Symposium, 1993, was a great success, and brought 
 together many active researchers in parallel rendering. The proceedings
 was published through SIGGRAPH, and also distributed through the SIGGRAPH+
 option reaching a wide audience. A special issue of IEEE Computer Graphics &
 Applications was devoted to the Symposium, and just appeared in the July
 1994 issue.

 TOPIC 9) Parallel Rendering Symposium 95 plans

 The Parallel Rendering Symposium is scheduled to occur with IEEE Visualization
 '95 in Atlanta. For more information see:
 WWW site: http:://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~craig/prs95-info.html or e-mail
 prs95-info@cse.ucsc.edu.

[END OF THE mp-render FAQ]

