Unleashing the Power of Mathematica and GPU: Speed Up 3D Graph Visualization

[faitswulff]

I was playing around with Mathematica and I discovered this via the help:

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/6534/cosxsinypcosysinzpcoszsvc7.jpg

...which is basically the most bad-ass 3D graph I've ever seen, much less had generated on my computer! Yes, I'm only in Calc II for now, but now I can't WAIT to get to Calc III and learn how to visualize pretty 3D graphs!

Anyway, my question is this - right now, I believe my CPU is rendering these graphs, but I want my GPU to render it. I think it might be a lot faster, and allow me to tinker more. Does anyone have any idea on how to do that?

Many thanks

 

[B. Elliott]

Sounds like you'd be interested in Nvidias CUDA...

The 8-Series (G8X) GeForce-based GPU from Nvidia is the first series of GPU to support the CUDA SDK. The 8-Series (G8X) GPUs features hardware support for 32-bit (single precision) floating point vector processors, using the CUDA SDK as API. (CUDA supports the C "double" data type, however on G8X series GPUs these types will get demoted to 32-bit floats.). Due to the highly parallel nature of vector processors, GPU assisted hardware stream processing can have a huge impact in specific data processing applications. It is anticipated in the computer gaming industry that graphics cards may be used in future game physics calculations (physical effects like debris, smoke, fire, fluids). CUDA has also been used to accelerate non-graphical applications in computational biology and other fields by an order of magnitude or more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_get.html

 

[K.J.Healey]

I think wants:

EDIT >> Preferences
Advanced Tab
Open Option Inspector Button
Click the "+" sign next to graphics options
"Rendering Options"

and change the graphics 3d rendering engine to "hardware"

 

[faitswulff]

Thanks for the tip! Unfortunately it didn't make it any faster, although "software" makes it extremely slow. Maybe I'm making a few vital assumptions about either my machine or how Mathematica renders that are wrong.

 

[Crosson]

It's hard to do an accurate implicit plot of that transcendental equation!

Try changing it to a polynomial equation of high order and you'll find it to be much faster.

 

[K.J.Healey]

Also, I think it IS hardware rendered, but your GPU can't calculate the solutions.

 

[faitswulff]

Crosson, how do I do that? Or where could I go to find out how to? Can Mathematica do it for me?

Mr. Healey, I believe this is the case as well. However, I think I would probably need something like nVidia's CUDA in order to get it to work, like Elliot said. I don't think Mathematica supports DirectX or OpenGL...