S.Alagiavanan 3rd CSE GRAPHIC CARDS: V.Narendran 3rd CSE HOW THEY WORK voultion of computing over the last decade EVER Yet very few of you know exactly how these has seen a distinct differentiation based on marvels work. Today's graphic cards are the nature of the workload. On the one WONDERED marvels of engineering, with over 50 times the E raw computational power of current CPUs, but hand you have the computing heavy tasks while on the other, there are graphics intensive tasks. Rewind WHAT GOES they have far more specific and streamlined a back a decade, and you will remember almost every ON BEHIND task. There are two aspects to understanding other motherboard having a dedicated display port how a graphics card works. The first is to as the graphics processor was onboard. Also some THE SCENES understand how it works with the rest of the present day processors which sport integrated WHEN YOU components in a personal computer to generate graphics also have IGP ports on the board. But with an image. The second part would be to the graphical workloads getting more advanced and POWER UP understand the role of major components on outputs more realistic, you would need to invest in a video card. dedicated graphics processing unit to divide tasks YOUR between the CPU and the GPU. Another advantage GAME? of having a dedicated graphics processing unit is the fact that it lets your CPU be free to perform READ ON. other tasks. For instance you can rip a movie in the background while playing a game. We're used to seeing pixel crunching monsters that can spit out millions of polygons per second, and run even the most demanding 3D games at blistering frame rates 6 | online follow us on facebook.com/infoquest.gct march 2012 STAGES OF A GRAPHIC CARD STAGES IN GPU WORKING WORKING IN A SYSTEM TRANSFORMATION At its most basic, a graphic card creates an image that you see on This stage involves computing on vertex data, which are your screen from binary data that it receives from the CPU. This data points in 3D space and converting these number into is converted to an image in parts. First, wireframes are created out of polygons in a 2D space. Based on the coordinates these straight lines, and elements like texture, lighting and colour are objects are placed relative to each other in what is a 2D added. The largest part of this work is done by the GPU, or graphic space, although the objects remain 3D. processing unit, a unit that compliments the CPU that is responsible for pixel and texture crunching among other things. There are other LIGHTING components on the graphic card other than the GPU, video RAM is These polygons are lit correctly, as they will appear based one such component, as well as a video-decoding chip enabling on the positioning and number of light sources and playback. A graphic card also has a lot of power circuitry and power reflective surfaces. controllers, for like any PC component, GPUs need precise power delivery. VIEWPOINT Graphic cards communicate with the CPU via a bus The viewpoint or orientation of user is taken into account, system on the motherboard. The current bus is PCI Express. As the closer objects will be larger and vice versa and all objects need for more powerful cards arose, the need for faster, more in the scene are manipulated on basis of the orientation. efficient communication pathways between CPU and GPU also became more urgent. Therefore the AGP bus gave way to PCI Express, and currently we're at PCIe v2.0 with the next generation CLIPPING PCIe V3.0 boards already in circulation. This involves pruning off the objects that will not be We've already know that the GPU receives data in the visible to the user. This saves the GPU precious binary form from the CPU. This data could be about a simple bitmap computation power as calculations for objects not in the image with colour references to each pixel, or a complex 3D game, viewable scene need not be done. in which case there will be chaging pixel information, texture information, geometry information, shader information, as well as RASTERIZATION lighting information. Objects are assigned to pixels, or in other words the In the past, CPU sent all data to the GPU which was only scene is visualised as it would be on your monitor-a required to draw an output on the display and nothing more. But bunch of 2D pixels. nowadays, apart from getting graphical data, the GPU also helps in certain computing tasks by working in tandem in a heterogeneous computing model with the CPU. For instance, offloading certain TRIANGLE SETUP tasks from CPU which can be performed better & faster using More complex shapes are made from joining the parallel processing in the GPU (such as CUDA cores) the tasks vertex, points, and creating multi-sided wireframe range from transcoding to molecular dynamics and computational models as are seen in 3D scenes. finance and many more. This is also known as GPU Computing or such a setup is known as a GPGPU computing.. So let's look at what happens when you hit that game exe file sitting on your desktop. The GPU itself performs quite a few tasks as we've listed. These CULLING tasks are completed in what is referred to as graphics pipeline. This Non-viewable pixels are removed. This is actually the pipeline is what converts all this 3D data into an image viewable on a second stage of culling after clipping. 2D screen-your monitor. Both NVIDIA and AMD have slightly different pipelines, but the processes and stages are roughly the same, with a few unique steps in the form of tweaks, optimisations and such. Graphically or more accurately in terms of 3D rendering, TEXTURE AND SHADING these stages are shown alongside. This involves performing a makeup job on each pixel. In case you are using an analogue display, the RAMDAC A texture is a 2D image that is added to the surface of present on the graphic card converts this digital data to an analogue a 3D object giving it a realistic look, while a pixel signal to be sent to the monitor via a D-Sub cable. In you are using a shader involves defining properties like colour, texture digital connectivity, such as an LCD monitor, there is no digital to and depth effects to a pixel to give it special analogue conversion required. appearance that mimics reality. 7 | online follow us on twitter.com/infoquest_gct march 2012 Techxtravaganza Round-up of Asia's largest technology symposium, Techfest 2012 held at IIT-Powai G.KEERTHANA FINAL CSE D.SUGANYA FINAL CSE The big daddy of all the technology festivals not only in India but the cheer participants of the Robowars and bridge building whole of Asia- the IIT Techfest, happened in January. Just like last competitions and much more. Do check out the DVD for some year, we were there this year as well. We got to see some cutting exclusive videos of the event. Seen here are some things at the IIT edge technology over the three days, attend some riveting talks, Techfest that impressed us. Canyon cross Nao A very interesting bridge building competition, participants can The humanoid robot Nao had everyone impressed with its only build a bridge using tooth picks, ice-cream sticks, white ability to mimic human behaviour. Developed by Aldebaran glue and thread! You need to apply all your knowledge of trusses robotics from France, Nao is finding application in the real here as the catch in the competition was that the bridge should be world as an active lab assistant, assisting children with able to sustain certain load. At last some bridge which could autism thanks to its ability to express happiness, sadness, sustain 200 kg plus of load has been constructed. anger and other emotions like humans. CrazyCopter Touted to be the smallest Quadrocopter in the world and weighing Micycle in at just 20 grams, CrazyFlie is the prototype of the CrazyCopter. This was a unique concept from university of Adelaide, It includes a PCB fitted with four motors which can be controlled Australia. This unicycle balances you by detecting the rate of by a PS joystick. Immediate applications we were told lie in the fall both forwards and backwards and adjusting the motor field of surveillance where the Quadrocopter fitted with a camera. speed accordingly. It uses a gyroscope and an accelerometer (Think '3 idiots' but a very very miniscule Quadrocopter). It's to measure the rotation and position of the device relative to developed by Arnaud Taffeanel, Tobias Antonsson, Marcus the ground. Eliasson of Daedalus projects. 8 | online follow us on facebook.com/infoquest.gct march 2012 being rendered was streamed to the tablet as a video. This allowed him to walk around the set DINES KUMAR.G 3RD IT and observe the elements as they would be seen ARUN RAJ D 3RD IT The future in the movie (the blue screen would be replaced by the actual environment of the scene), Autodesk is a company that enabling him to direct the actors in real-time in needs no introduction .Some the context of an animated environment. may say it's the world leader in Autodesk recently signed an agreement with 3D and engineering design is 3D Walt Disney for a tech called “X-gen”, software . Here is what developed by Walt Disney's top secret something about it.