Intel ® Visual

intel science and technology center
Semantically labeled 3D model, suitable for urban planning (University of Washington).
Graphics and Systems
Research
To create the future architectures needed to
support advances such as those outlined in
the above three themes, ISTC-VC researchers
will explore next-generation architectures and
tools that address the following four crucial
technology trends:
• Personal computing is increasingly moving
away from traditional desktop computers
toward mobile devices, ranging from laptops
to tablets to pocket-sized computers, phones,
and other battery-powered devices. This is
creating a need to design systems that focus
on mobility with an emphasis on poweraware
design, miniaturization, and efficient
computing given a minimal cost, power, and
volume budget.
• Just as computing is moving away from
traditional PCs onto mobile devices,
computing is also moving in a new direction—
into the cloud—which can deliver superior
reliability, cost savings, and scalability
compared to the desktop.
• GPU design is evolving from an emphasis
on pure fixed function designs to a much
more programmable design philosophy that
promises to provide algorithm flexibility
and programmer productivity, and improve
overall system efficiency. This trend is
likely to result in heterogeneous graphics
systems with heterogeneity at many levels:
fine-grained (such as integer versus floatingpoint
arithmetic logic units (ALUs)), medium-
grained (such as rasterization or texture
filtering units), and coarse-grained (CPU cores
versus GPU cores). Determining the right
mix of units and programming the resulting
heterogeneous systems is one of the grand
systems design challenges in computing.
• Finally, at all levels of computing, from
mobile to desktop to the cloud, the gap is
growing between the capabilities of the
hardware—what the system can do—and the
delivered performance of the software—what
the system actually does. As the hardware
becomes more complex, more parallel, and
more heterogeneous, there is a real and
growing need to solve the programmability
problem by building software that allows
programmers and users to make the most
of the hardware. These trends will affect
designs, implementations, and software
support for future graphics systems of all
sizes, from small, inexpensive mobile systems
to traditional single-node.
Creating the Future
It is difficult to imagine all the potential visual
computing experiences that will be possible in 10
years, but with the launch of ISTC-VC, Intel hopes
to drive the development of the technologies
required to realize them. By bringing together the
top minds in the field, in Europe and now across
the United States, Intel has made a substantial
commitment to advancing the future of visual
computing, for the benefit of researchers and
consumers alike. •
Researchers at the University of Washington are
exploring ways to segment photos of people into
components that can be tagged, tracked, and
manipulated to create new 3D content.
While current
3D-modeling
methods represent
the scene as
an unorganized
mass of points or
triangles, nextgeneration
systems
will recognize what
is in the scene—
doors, chairs, stairs,
sidewalks, windows,
tables, and other
components.
intel visual adrenaline no. 10, 2011 41