Reality Engine graphics

Abstract

TM graphics system is the first of a new genera- tion of systems designed primarily to render texture mapped, an- tialiased polygons. This paper describes the architecture of the RealityEngine graphics system, then justifies some of the decisions made during its design. The implementation is near-massively par- allel, employing 353 independent processors in its fullest configura- tion, resulting in a measured fill rate of over 240 million antialiased, texture mapped pixels per second. Rendering performance exceeds 1 million antialiased, texture mapped triangles per second. In ad- dition to supporting the functions required of a general purpose, high-end graphics workstation, the system enables realtime, "out- the-window" image generation and interactive image processing.