Parallel Rendering

Scalability for large-scale displays

Equalizer is the standard middleware to create parallel OpenGL-based applications. It enables applications to benefit from multiple graphics cards, processors and computers to scale rendering performance, visual quality and display size. An Equalizer-based application runs unmodified on any visualization system, from a simple workstation to large scale graphics clusters, multi-GPU workstations and Virtual Reality installations.

Benefits

• Parallel Rendering Know-How: Equalizer contains the essence of 10+ years of experience in parallel and scalable rendering, easily integrated into your application.
• Fast Path for Scalable OpenGL Applications: Equalizer provides the natural parallel execution model to exploit the parallelism of multicore, multi-GPU workstations and graphics clusters.
• Feature-Rich Framework: Equalizer contains state-of-the-art scalable rendering algorithms, and its open development model ensures constant improvement. Equalizer applications are flexible and deployable in many, rapidly changing environments.

Features

Applications written using the Equalizer framework benefit from the following features:

• Runtime Configurability: An Equalizer application can run optimally on any configuration, from laptops to large scale visualization clusters. The application is configured flexibly at runtime using a simple configuration file.
• Runtime Scalability: An Equalizer application can aggregate the power of multiple processors, graphics cards and computers to scale the rendering performance, visual quality and display size.
• Distributed Execution: Equalizer applications can be written to support cluster-based execution. The task of distributing the application data is simplified through versioned, distributed objects.
• Support for Stereo and Immersive Environments: Equalizer supports both active and passive stereo rendering, as well as head tracking used in Virtual Reality installations.

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 version 1.1 in order to run, but uses later OpenGL features and extensions where available.

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.

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.