Calendar

Current Events

3.30

Creating a Sustainable Society

3.16

Sustainable Energy Engineering

2.28

National Science Foundation Day

2.17

Reformulation-Based Approaches to Query Optimization

2.15

FREEDM Day

2.10

WEST: Cloning Data Cache Behavior using Stochastic Traces

2.09

Computer Vision and Image Analysis in the Study of Art

2.08

GSA Social

2.03

Skewed functional processes and their applications

Low-Level Plumbing for Media Integration

Graphics processors, once considered to be exotic laboratory equipment, have become commodities which serve as the low-level plumbing of all interactive computers. In progressing to this point the architecture of graphics processors has gone through a complete circuit of the famous "wheel of reincarnation." This talk is both a look back and a look forward. In looking forward, we hope to shed some of the legacy structures of traditional graphics architectures. At the same time we must attempt to accommodate more than simple 3D graphics and to naturally support a broad range of integrated media.

Dr. Whitted is known as one of the pioneers in 3D computer graphics and the inventor of ray tracing. He is an ACM Fellow and currently serves as a senior researcher in Microsoft Research's hardware devices and graphics groups, and as chairman of the board of directors for Numerical Design Limited (NDL), a provider of 3D graphics tools and engines to developers of video games, online 3D applications, and simulation and training applications.

Dr. Whitted and Dr. Robert C. Whitton (formerly with Ikonas Graphics) founded NDL in 1983. Whitted served as company president up until 1998. Dr. Whitted served as an adjunct professor of computer science at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1983- 2001. Prior to 1983, he was a member of the technical staff in Bell Labs' computer systems research laboratory.