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Cache-Rings for Memory Efficient
Isosurface Construction

David M. Weinstein

Abstract:

Processor speeds continue to increase at faster rates than memory speeds. As this performance gap widens, it becomes increasingly important to develop ``memory-conscious'' algorithms - programs that still optimize instruction count and algorithmic complexity, but that also integrate optimizations for data locality and cache performance. In this paper we present a topological isosurface extraction algorithm which utilizes a ``cache-ring'' data structure to optimize memory performance. We compare our algorithm to an analogous edge-hashing algorithm which, though functionally equivalent, gives less priority to memory performance. While our algorithm actually executes more instructions during execution, we nonetheless see a speed-up over the traditional method, as we more-than-compensate for the extra instructions with superior memory performance.





Scientific Computing and Imaging
Wed Apr 23 17:39:06 MDT 1997