UWGSP4: an imaging and graphics superworkstation and its medical applications

UWGSP4 is configured with a parallel architecture for image processing and a pipelined architecture for computer graphics. The system's peak performance is 1,280 MFLOPS for image processing and over 200,000 Gouraud shaded 3-D polygons per second for graphics. The simulated sustained performance is about 50% of the peak performance in general image processing. Most of the 2-D image processing functions are efficiently vectorized and parallelized in IJWGSP4. A performance of 770 MFLOPS in convolution and 440 MFLOPS in FFT is achieved. The real-time cine display, up to 32 frames of 1280 x 1024 pixels per second, is supported. In 3-D imaging, the update rate for the surface rendering is 10 frames of 20,000 polygons per second; the update rate for the volume rendering is 6 frames of 128 x 128 x 128 voxels per second. The system provides 1280 x 1024 x 32-bit double frame buffers and one 1280 x 1024 x 8-bit overlay buffer for supporting realistic animation, 24-bit true color, and text annotation. A 1280 x 1024-pixel, 66-Hz noninterlaced display screen with 1 : 1 aspect ratio can be windowed into the frame buffer for the display of any portion of the processed image or graphics.