661
Off-Topic / Re: Flat earth
« on: 2015-11-20, 22:35:25 »
That's totally rendered, I can tell from some of the pixels. But nevertheless great example that Corona can render even such unreal things.
2022-08-14, 05:51:30
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662
Porting and API / Re: Corona for Sketchup Discussion
« on: 2015-11-18, 21:41:41 »
Thanks. If you want to apply for the closed beta, please follow the instructions Ondra posted in this thread https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,10237.0.html
It will certainly take some time before we're comfortable with the supported feature set, performance and stability to start an open beta. Until we go public, there's really no need for a trello board. You would then just be able to see how much I'm slacking off (I have other responsibilities besides SketchUp plugin development, like being the official office jerk) :)
It will certainly take some time before we're comfortable with the supported feature set, performance and stability to start an open beta. Until we go public, there's really no need for a trello board. You would then just be able to see how much I'm slacking off (I have other responsibilities besides SketchUp plugin development, like being the official office jerk) :)
663
Hardware / Re: Intel Xeon Phi
« on: 2015-11-18, 21:31:41 »
Although Xeon Phi (formerly Larrabee) has grown to have full-blown x86-64 cores, it's not as easy as plugging the card in your system and suddenly having 60 more CPU cores to play with. There are multiple issues a programmer has to deal with: asymmetric memory access, different instruction sets supported by the main processor and by the Xeon Phi cores and few others. The biggest issue is that Xeon Phi doesn't add more processors to your box, it is actually a standalone computer running Linux (which can share memory with the host computer).
Corona would have to run on Linux to be able to run on Xeon Phi. And in the end it probably wouldn't be much different from having a standalone powerful multicore machine used for distributed rendering.
There are few more implementation issues. There are 60 cores running at around 1.3 GHz, but each core is running 4 threads in parallel. So you actually have 240 threads, each running at 325 MHz. It can be a bit difficult for programmer to effectively juggle this many threads. Also to effectively use the available performance, Corona would have to be adapted to utilize the 512-bit AVX3/AVX-512 instruction set (a subset of which is also supported by the new Skylake Xeon processors).
Don't get me wrong, I would love to get my hands on this Intel beast and have an opportunity to play with it and bend Corona to its will. But I also believe that there are still many more other optimization opportunities which will benefit all users (there are not that many who can afford to buy Xeon Phi).
Corona would have to run on Linux to be able to run on Xeon Phi. And in the end it probably wouldn't be much different from having a standalone powerful multicore machine used for distributed rendering.
There are few more implementation issues. There are 60 cores running at around 1.3 GHz, but each core is running 4 threads in parallel. So you actually have 240 threads, each running at 325 MHz. It can be a bit difficult for programmer to effectively juggle this many threads. Also to effectively use the available performance, Corona would have to be adapted to utilize the 512-bit AVX3/AVX-512 instruction set (a subset of which is also supported by the new Skylake Xeon processors).
Don't get me wrong, I would love to get my hands on this Intel beast and have an opportunity to play with it and bend Corona to its will. But I also believe that there are still many more other optimization opportunities which will benefit all users (there are not that many who can afford to buy Xeon Phi).