Equalizer is an open source project providing a minimally invasive programming interface and resource management system for parallel, scalable OpenGL applications. It allows an application to run unmodified on any visualization system, from a simple workstation to large scale graphics clusters and multi-GPU workstations.
Applications
Equalizer is the industry-leading toolkit for parallel rendering, and is used by numerous commercial and research applications. Since it can be combined with any OpenGL-based rendering, Equalizer is used in a variety of vertical markets, for example content creation or scientific visualization.
Benefits
Equalizer-based applications can be used to:
- Visualize more: Scalable rendering is often used to visualize larger data sets at a higher visual quality. The focus is not always achieving higher framerates for existing data sets, but to visualize more data at a higher quality and increased resolution.
- Visualize anywhere: The same application can be used for all kind of installations without any changes, which is achieved by modularizing the rendering from the application logics.
- Visualize in parallel: Parallel rendering optimally exploits multicore architectures. One or more rendering threads execute in parallel to the application thread, providing the optimal performance for OpenGL-based rendering.
Compatibility
Equalizer is a cross-platform toolkit, available for Linux, Windows XP and Mac OS X and supports both 32-bit and 64-bit execution.
Equalizer does not interfere with the application's OpenGL rendering code. Equalizer requires at a minimum OpenGL 1.1 in order to run, but uses later OpenGL features and extensions where available.
License
The Equalizer framework is licensed under the LGPL open source license, which allows free usage in commercial and open source projects. Any changes to the framework itself have to be contributed back to open source.
Consulting, software development service and support are available from Eyescale Software GmbH.
Features
Applications written using the Equalizer programming interface benefit from the following features:
- Runtime Configurability: An Equalizer application can run on any configuration, from laptops to large scale visualization clusters, without recompilation. The runtime configuration is externalized from the application to a systemwide resource server, and choosen at runtime.
- Runtime Scalability: Applications written using Equalizer take advantage of multiple graphics cards, processors and computers to scale the display size and the rendering performance using scalable graphics algorithms.
- Distributed Execution: Equalizer applications can be written to support cluster-based execution. The task of distributing the application data is facilitated by support for versioned, distributed objects.
- Support for Stereo and Immersive Environments: Equalizer supports both active and passive stereo rendering, as well as the head tracking, which is required for immersive Virtual Reality installations.
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Project Mission
Equalizer is an open platform for high-performance visualization:
- Vendor Independence: The development is not governed by a single company. We work with several industry-leading hardware and software vendors as well as research institutions on improving Equalizer.
- Open Source: Equalizer uses a liberal license which allows usage in both open source and commercial products. The license ensures progress on the core framework and protects the ISV's investment in the future.
- Open Community: We encourage the usage in custom projects and welcome contributions to Equalizer by the community. We contribute our experience in parallel rendering back to the OpenGL community.