Hardware Accelerated Shaders Using FPGA
Authors: Goddard, L. and Stephenson, I.
Editors: Tang, W. and Collomosse, J.
Publisher: Eurographics Association
Place of Publication: Cardiff, UK
ISBN: 978-3-905673-71-5
Abstract:Graphics hardware isn't really suited to production rendering, so high quality hardware accelerated rendering is difficult. Custom hardware solutions are financially impractical. FPGA allow custom hardware to be generated at run time, allowing rendering hardware to be customised, not just for generic rendering, but for each surface in each scene. RenderMan shaders for each surface are compiled to hardware allowing surface illumination to be calculated at true hardware speeds.
Source: Manual
Preferred by: Ian Stephenson