Hello CSC Members! Hope your term's coming to an agreeable end. We have a variety of events coming up in the next couple of weeks to finish off the term. == Path Tracing by Syed Albiz Thursday, July 18, 17:00, in MC 4041 Abstract: As a follow on to last term's tutorial on building a ray-tracer from scratch, I'll be presenting the basic mechanics of how a bidirectional path- tracer creates a globally illuminated scene, advantages and limitations of this approach over other offline global illumination techniques along with simple example path-tracer written in C++, and (time permitting) opportunities for hardware acceleration on GPUs. == CSC Goes Outside! Friday, July 19, 19:00, EV Fire Pit Event will happen rain or shine. Come out for an evening at a campfire BBQ at the Laurel Creek Firepit across from the Environment building / near Velocity. Feel free to bring friends, musical instruments, frisbees, or other entertainment. We'll have more than sufficient meat, Smores, Ice cream, etc. available for enjoyment. =) == The Future of 3D Graphics is in Software! by Gavriel State, founder of TransGaming and Nicolas Capens Monday, July 22nd, 17:00, in MC 4020 Abstract: For some time now, it has been clear that there is strong momentum for convergence between CPU and GPU technologies. Initially, each technology used radically different approaches to processing, but over time GPUs have evolved to support more general purpose use while CPUs have evolved to include advanced vector processing and multiple execution cores. At TransGaming, we believe that this convergence will continue to the point where typical systems have only one type of processing unit, with large numbers of cores and very wide vector execution units available for high performance parallel execution. In this kind of environment, all graphics processing will ultimately take place in software. In this talk, we will explore the converging nature of CPU and GPU approaches to processing, how dynamic specialization allows CPUs to efficiently perform tasks usually done by GPUs, and why we believe that the increased flexibility of more programmable architectures will ultimately win out over fixed function hardware, even in areas such as texture sampling. *TransGaming Inc.* works at the cutting edge of 3D graphics, building technologies that bridge the gap between platform boundaries to allow games to be played on a variety of devices and operating systems. TransGaming works with other industry leaders to update established APIs such as OpenGL, while also breaking new ground in software rendering technology, which we believe will become increasingly important as CPU and GPU technologies converge. *Nicolas Capens* is the architect of SwiftShader, TransGaming's high performance software renderer, and is also deeply involved in the ANGLE project, which provides efficient translation from OpenGL ES to Direct3D APIs for implementing WebGL on Windows. Nicolas received his MSci.Eng. degree in computer science from Ghent University in 2007. *Gavriel* *State *(Gav) is TransGaming's Founder & CTO, and has worked in graphics and portability for over 20 year on dozens of platforms and APIs. Gav wrote his first software renderer when taking CS488 at UW, where he later graduated with a B.A.Sc. in Systems Design Engineering. == Code Party 1 Friday, July 26, 19:00, in MC Comfy Lounge Celebrate the last Friday of classes working on some personal projects or just hanging out with the cool crowd. Pizza and other refreshments will be provided, as well as music, entertainment, and potentially more Artemis later in the evening. (We do want to get some coding done this time around ;) ) == Future events: The following week is likely to include CSC Clean Up Party and our termly Ctrl+D EOT party. Information will come forth closer to date. == Looking forward to seeing you at our events. Calum T. Dalek Overlord, CSC X-TERMINATE