[vtkusers] streaming and parallel execution

[Steve M. Robbins]

Howdy,

I've been asked to report on the "scalability" of VTK, by which is
meant what support is available for large data sets.

I have read
http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK_FAQ#How_to_handle_large_data_sets_in_VTK
which describes how to reduce memory usage.  I thought there was also
a "streaming" mode whereby filters would process the data in pieces.
I see vtkStreamingDemandDrivenPipeline in the doxygen docs, with an
example program
(Examples/ParallelProcessing/Generic/Cxx/ParallelIso.cxx) that
suggests one has to use this explicitly in the pipeline.  Is that the
case?

On the other end of the spectrum, if you have enough memory and
multiple CPUs, you might want to process the pipeline in parallel.  I
have a vague recollection that VTK magically detected the number of
processors and set up the streaming automatically.  Is that the case?
How can I tell whether a filter can take advantage of multi-threading?
I found vtkThreadedImageAlgorithm, which claims to support
multithreading -- is the set of its subclasses the set of filters that
support multi-threading?

Is there a way to take advantage of multiple GPUs in a machine -- e.g.
to speed up volume rendering or to allow volume rendering of a larger
dataset?


Thanks,
-Steve
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