From: Allan Schaffer (allan++at++sgi.com)
Date: 07/15/2003 10:07:45
Hello Brian,
Brian Corrie wrote:
> Do you have any comments on how Performer will support the new architecture,
> specifically the data distribution to pipes (assuming a tiled display) and
> the compositing? Will there be any mechanisms in Performer to facilitate this
> or is it primarily left up to the user application? Is there another API on
> top of Performer (Multipipe SDK???) that will handle these things?
>
> I admit I am not familiar with Infinite Performance (which also has
> compositing) and how Performer supports it either. I know it has some
> capabailities along these lines, while UltimateVision be supported in the
> same way?
Yes; and some great questions. Starting from the high-level view,
Performer handles the large number of pipes & compositing features of
Onyx4 UV in the same way as we did for the Onyx InfinitePerformance.
The details:
In Performer 3.0 we added a new control class called the "pfCompositor"
which gives the user access to the Compositor functionality, much like
the "pfPipe" encapsulates the processing done for a graphics pipeline.
(Onyx4 UV ships with IRIX 6.5.21 & Performer 3.0.2)
Looking from the developer's point of view, the pipes are handled the
same way on IR, IP, and UV: via the standard pfMultipipe() call and
pfGetPipe(n) to get a handle to each. Compositors are much the same,
you create a pfCompositor ("pfNewCompositor" or "new pfCompositor()"
depending on C or C++) and then add pfPipe numbers as its "children".
Bind in the compositor with the pfHyperpipe2D() call and that's pretty
much it. A related option is a "pfLoadBalance" class which helps to
automatically adjust compositor parameters during run-time for pipe load
balancing.
There are two samples which ship with Performer 3.0 :
/usr/share/Performer/src/pguide/libpf/C++/compositor.C
/usr/share/Performer/src/pguide/libpf/C++/compositor2.C
It's also been integrated into "perfly". So from the end-user
perspective it's....
perfly -M 3 <args>
Allan
-- Allan Schaffer allan++at++sgi.com Engr. Manager, Core Rendering 1-650-933-2160 Silicon Graphics http://www.sgi.com
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