OpenRL

[[gk]]

Hey guys, dont know if anyone has been following Caustic
But I think this would be interesting to share.
http://vimeo.com/10295410

[Sam]

Just seen it on CGTalk
Its interesting

[[gk]]

I think its alot more than interesting

[WiKKiDWidgets]

http://www.caustic.com/dev_emulation_register.php

[YoonKyung]

Octane multi GPU will be faster than it.

[[gk]]

No
OpenRL is a wrapper - more over a structured raytrace API. A Raytrace API that you can port exsiting renderengines to.
The benefits from OpenRL is that you are provided with a range of prefabricated optimized tools aiding to gain usage from ANY kind of hardware, not only GPU's
So this means that if you wrap your stuff into OpenRL you can use , CPU's, GPU's, Custom render hardware as raytrace acceleration cards, whatever has some computer brains and will run one of the major OS's.

The reason why it is realy cool formoste is that it takes a huge amount of work to get something developed, you have to write everything from the ground when starting without a raytrace API like the OpenRL.
Something like Arion that utilises both gpu+cpu could be done with alot less effort than you would have to now ( reinventing the wheele )

I hope Radiance will be taking advantage of OpenRL

[YoonKyung]

I meaned thier 'CausticOne'

[Chris]

So in theory you can use any kind of hardware if i understand right? If so, then this is something Radiance should take a close look at

[[gk]]

I meaned thier 'CausticOne'

okay
Yes the CausticOne is a FPGA ( field programable gate array ) which runs at 10% clock speed of a consumer unit. This means that whatever is done on the causticone will be 10x faster on a caustictwo ( the one people can buy )
Octane under OpenRL could use this unit just perfectly.
However, any other computing power that runs under either windows, osx, linux could be harnesed and used as well.
Not only GPU's

And yes in theory you could strap your iphones up to octane and use the procesor to help rendering

[gpu-renderer]

There was a OS called elate that did this at the OS level.. It used up to 41 different cpu architectures across a network. With VP code you could write an application that would take the best registers for a given task/thread from each cpu in the network and you would maximise calculations. The code is virtual processor code. A combination of all registers in a virtual software cpu for tapping into hetrogenious registers. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts... what happend to this amazing idea I do not know. The demo's I saw though were just light years ahead of all the other OS's todate.... microsoft/apple are far from cutting edge. A british designed OS to... yes the brains are still there... shame about the marketers :0) ... Amiga were suppose to use this OS for a multi platform OS across all sorts of devices... As it could run, windows,linux,mac and any other OS software when a new architecture layer was developed. Sad really it didnt have the marketing behind it!


http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Developer- ... LATE.shtml


dam shame!