Information
- Publication Type: Master Thesis
- Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
- Date: June 2008
- First Supervisor: Michael Wimmer
- Keywords: real-time rendering, game engines
Abstract
3D Graphics are an important part of a lot of software nowadays, ranging from games to medical or architectural visualization. Especially games drive the development of more and more powerful graphic cards and consoles. The graphics engine is the component of the software responsible for visual presentation. On consoles the hardware layout is di erent to that of a standard PC, thus making it interesting to adapt and optimize a rendering engine for a speci c hardware con guration. The multi-processor technology of the PlayStation 2 with its extensive parallelism is optimal to show the di erences between platforms with a rendering engine prototype. To get basic knowledge, an overview of the hardware along with design strategies is given. The main di erence to a PC engine is the non-existence of a graphics API like OpenGL or DirectX. Because of the xed hardware layout it is possible to design the engine to t perfectly to the available hardware and optimize it accordingly without any need for compatibility to di erent hardware settings. To get acceptable performance on the PlayStation 2, various bu ering schemes, as well as the use of the di erent available processing units are explained and incorporated in the engine design. The PlayStation 2 o ers parallelism in the rasterizer, which creates the need for synchronization. To achieve this, two di erent techniques are explained and a CPU-independent synchronization using the DMA controller is implemented. The main part of the thesis is the direct comparison between an engine design for the PlayStation 2 and the PC. This is especially shown on various small e ects, like motion blur or glow, implemented on the PlayStation 2, exploiting specialized features available only on this platform, and the PC. The engine prototype includes a toolchain for models and textures into a PlayStation 2 optimized format for fast usage. It uses the available Vector Units to shift processing load from the CPU to the other components and makes excessive usage of DMA transfer to get parallel upload of textures and other data. Various special e ects were implemented to help to point out the di erences between conventional PC hardware and the PlayStation 2. Summing up, this thesis proposes an engine design for the PlayStation 2 using various features of this hardware and comparing its possibilities with those of conventional PC hardware. The thesis is divided into a basic overview of the rendering steps and the hardware of the PlayStation 2. This is followed by a detailed layout of the design issues for the engine and a comparison to the PC.Additional Files and Images
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Weblinks
No further information available.BibTeX
@mastersthesis{SATZER-2008,
title = "Console Engine Design on the Example of the PlayStation 2 in
Comparison to the PC",
author = "Manfred Satzer",
year = "2008",
abstract = "3D Graphics are an important part of a lot of software
nowadays, ranging from games to medical or architectural
visualization. Especially games drive the development of
more and more powerful graphic cards and consoles. The
graphics engine is the component of the software responsible
for visual presentation. On consoles the hardware layout is
di erent to that of a standard PC, thus making it
interesting to adapt and optimize a rendering engine for a
speci c hardware con guration. The multi-processor
technology of the PlayStation 2 with its extensive
parallelism is optimal to show the di erences between
platforms with a rendering engine prototype. To get basic
knowledge, an overview of the hardware along with design
strategies is given. The main di erence to a PC engine is
the non-existence of a graphics API like OpenGL or DirectX.
Because of the xed hardware layout it is possible to design
the engine to t perfectly to the available hardware and
optimize it accordingly without any need for compatibility
to di erent hardware settings. To get acceptable performance
on the PlayStation 2, various bu ering schemes, as well as
the use of the di erent available processing units are
explained and incorporated in the engine design. The
PlayStation 2 o ers parallelism in the rasterizer, which
creates the need for synchronization. To achieve this, two
di erent techniques are explained and a CPU-independent
synchronization using the DMA controller is implemented. The
main part of the thesis is the direct comparison between an
engine design for the PlayStation 2 and the PC. This is
especially shown on various small e ects, like motion blur
or glow, implemented on the PlayStation 2, exploiting
specialized features available only on this platform, and
the PC. The engine prototype includes a toolchain for models
and textures into a PlayStation 2 optimized format for fast
usage. It uses the available Vector Units to shift
processing load from the CPU to the other components and
makes excessive usage of DMA transfer to get parallel upload
of textures and other data. Various special e ects were
implemented to help to point out the di erences between
conventional PC hardware and the PlayStation 2. Summing up,
this thesis proposes an engine design for the PlayStation 2
using various features of this hardware and comparing its
possibilities with those of conventional PC hardware. The
thesis is divided into a basic overview of the rendering
steps and the hardware of the PlayStation 2. This is
followed by a detailed layout of the design issues for the
engine and a comparison to the PC.",
month = jun,
address = "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
school = "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
University of Technology ",
keywords = "real-time rendering, game engines",
URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2008/SATZER-2008/",
}