Homework #2

Most problems for this homework are from the textbook.

Submit your work work on the Blackboard before midnight the day the homework is due. Failure to do so will result in late penalties, see the syllabus for grading detail.

Here are the requirements for your Blackboard submission:

• Attach the assignment as a compressed archive file (.zip, .tgz, .tbz2, .rar)
• The name of the file should be: firstName-lastName-HW-assignmentNumber.extension (e.g. Jane-Doe-HW-2.zip)
• Include your e-mail address in the Comment field when submitting the assignment through the Digital Drop Box
• If for any reason you are submitting the assignment more than once, indicate this in the Comment field by including the word COMPLEMENT

1. In this exercise you'll have to compare the performance of two computers using a real-life application, in this particular case a ray-tracing program. The name of the program is POV-Ray and can be downloaded from povray.org.

You'll have to compile and run the executable on two different computers, for example your own and one in the CS computer lab, and then render the same scene on each computer.

You'll have to measure rendering time and compare the relative performance of the two computers.

The base scene to be used for benchmarking can be found here. You must modify the benchmark.pov file such that you have a camera location and light_source unique to your own.

Your instructor will be very disappointed if he finds two students that have the same camera location and light_source.

The width of the rendered image should be 512px. The image should be in .png format.

Extra Credit: You can earn a 100% extra credit on this problem if you create a scene based on the folowing specifications:

• Camera is located in the center of a sphere that's perfectly reflective
• In the center of the sphere there is a checkered square about 1% of the radius of the sphere. The checkered square has at least two rows and two columns, colored black and white
• The light source is placed in the center of the sphere

Here is what you'll have to turn in:

• A detailed description of the two computers you've used for running the benchmark. Include detail such as CPU type and speed, amount of main memory and speed, operating system, etc.
• The execution times on each of the two computers and a statement as to which computer is faster and by how much than the other one.
• Copies of the rendered scene on the two computers.
• A copy of benchmark.pov you used to run your tests.

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