Skip to search boxSkip to navigationSkip to main content

Parallel marching blocks: a practical isosurfacing algorithm for large data on many-core architectures

  • Baoquan Liu
    ,
  • Gordon Clapworthy
    ,
  • Feng Dong
    ,
  • Enhua Wu
  • University of Macau
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

Interactive isosurface visualisation has been made possible by mapping algorithms to GPU architectures. However, current state-of-the-art isosurfacing algorithms usually consume large amounts of GPU memory owing to the additional acceleration structures they require. As a result, the continued limitations on available GPU memory mean that they are unable to deal with the larger datasets that are now increasingly becoming prevalent. This paper proposes a new parallel isosurface-extraction algorithm that exploits the blocked organisation of the parallel threads found in modern many-core platforms to achieve fast isosurface extraction and reduce the associated memory requirements. This is achieved by optimising thread co-operation within thread-blocks and reducing redundant computation; ultimately, an indexed triangular mesh could be produced. Experiments have shown that the proposed algorithm is much faster (up to 10×) than state-of-the-art GPU algorithms and has a much smaller memory footprint, enabling it to handle much larger datasets (up to 64×) on the same GPU.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Computer Graphics Forum (Volume 35, Issue 3)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 04/07/2016

Publication status

Published - 04/07/2016

ISSN

0167-7055

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/622862
  • Scopus: 84978966704

Access to documents

Publication metrics

Metrics

Download statistics
Download count
2

PlumX, opens in new tab

8
Social media
1
Captures
23