Optimised, high-performance, multi-threaded rendering pipeline

Fri Nov 25 11:19:22 UTC 2016

Yes.

> On 25 Nov. 2016, at 21:45, Tobias Bley <bley at jpro.io> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> @Felix: Is there any Github project, demo video or trial to test HPR with JavaFX?
> 
> Best regards,
> Tobi
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> Am 11.11.2016 um 12:08 schrieb Felix Bembrick <felix.bembrick at gmail.com>:
>> 
>> Thanks Laurent,
>> 
>> That's another thing we discovered: using Java itself in the most performant way can help a lot.
>> 
>> It can be tricky, but profiling can often highlight various patterns of object instantiation that show-up red flags and can lead you directly to regions of the code that can be refactored to be significantly more efficient.
>> 
>> Also, the often overlooked GC log analysis can lead to similar discoveries and remedies.
>> 
>> Blessings,
>> 
>> Felix
>> 
>>> On 11 Nov. 2016, at 21:55, Laurent Bourgès <bourges.laurent at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> To optimize Pisces that became the Marlin rasterizer, I carefully avoided any both array allocation (byte/int/float pools) and also reduced array copies or clean up ie only clear dirty parts.
>>> 
>>> This approach is generic and could be applied in other critical places of the rendering pipelines.
>>> 
>>> FYI here are my fosdem 2016 slides on the Marlin renderer:
>>> https://bourgesl.github.io/fosdem-2016/slides/fosdem-2016-Marlin.pdf
>>> 
>>> Of course I would be happy to share my experience and work with a tiger team on optimizing JavaFX graphics.
>>> 
>>> However I would like getting sort of sponsoring for my potential contributions...
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Laurent
>>> 
>>> Le 11 nov. 2016 11:29, "Tobi" <tobi at ultramixer.com> a écrit :
>>>> 
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> thanks Felix, Laurent and Chris for sharing your stuff with the community!
>>>> 
>>>> I am happy to see starting a discussion about boosting up the JavaFX rendering performance. I can confirm that the performance of JavaFX scene graph is not there where it should be. So multithreading would be an excellent, but difficult approach.
>>>> 
>>>> Felix, concerning your research of other toolkits: Do they all use multithreading or are there any toolkits which use single threading but are faster than JavaFX?
>>>> 
>>>> So maybe there are other points than multithreading where we can boost the performance?
>>>> 
>>>> 2) your HPR sounds great. Did you already try DemoFX (part 3) benchmark with your HPR?
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Best regards,
>>>> Tobi
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> Am 10.11.2016 um 19:11 schrieb Felix Bembrick <felix.bembrick at gmail.com>:
>>>>> 
>>>>> (Thanks to Kevin for lifting my "awaiting moderation" impasse).
>>>>> 
>>>>> So, with all the recent discussions regarding the great contribution by
>>>>> Laurent Bourgès of MarlinFX, it was suggested that a separate thread be
>>>>> started to discuss parallelisation of the JavaFX rendering pipeline in
>>>>> general.
>>>>> 
>>>>> As has been correctly pointed-out, converting or modifying the existing
>>>>> rendering pipeline into a fully multi-threaded and performant beast is
>>>>> indeed quite a complex task.
>>>>> 
>>>>> But, that's exactly what myself and my colleagues have been working on for
>>>>> about 2 years.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The result is what we call the Hyper Rendering Pipeline (HPR).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Work on HPR started when we developed FXMark and were (bitterly)
>>>>> disappointed with the performance of the JavaFX scene graph.  Many JavaFX
>>>>> developers have blogged about the need to dramatically minimise the number
>>>>> of nodes (especially on embedded devices) in order to achieve even
>>>>> "acceptable" performance.  Often it is the case that most (if not all
>>>>> rendering) is eventually done in a single Canvas node.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Now, as well already know, the JavaFX Canvas does perform very well and the
>>>>> recent awesome work (DemoFX) by Chris Newland, just for example, shows what
>>>>> can be done with this one node.
>>>>> 
>>>>> But, the majority of the animation plumbing in JavaFX is related to the
>>>>> scene graph itself and is designed to make use of multiple nodes and node
>>>>> types.  At the moment, the performance of this scene graph is the Achilles
>>>>> Heel of JavaFX (or at least one of them).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Enter HPR.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I personally have worked with a number of hardware-accelerated toolkits
>>>>> over the years and am astounded by just how sluggish the rendering pipeline
>>>>> for JavaFX is. When I am animating just a couple of hundred nodes using
>>>>> JavaFX and transitions, I am lucky to get more than about 30 FPS, but on
>>>>> the same (very powerful) machine, I can use other toolkits to render
>>>>> thousands of "objects" and achieve frame rates well over 1000 FPS.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So, we refactored the entire scene graph rendering pipeline with the
>>>>> following goals and principles:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1. It is written using JavaFX 9 and Java 9 (but could theoretically be
>>>>> back-ported to JavaFX 8 though I see no reason to).
>>>>> 
>>>>> 2. We analysed how other toolkits had optimised their own rendering
>>>>> pipelines (especially Qt which has made some significant advances in this
>>>>> area in recent years).  We also analysed recent examples of multi-threaded
>>>>> rendering using the new Vulkan API.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 3. We carefully analysed and determined which parts of the pipeline should
>>>>> best utilise the CPU and which parts should best utilise the GPU.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 4. For those parts most suited to the CPU, we use the advanced concurrency
>>>>> features of Java 8/9 to maximise parallelisation and throughput by
>>>>> utilising multiple cores & threads in as an efficient manner as possible.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 5. We devoted a large amount of time to optimising the "communication"
>>>>> between the CPU and GPU to be far less "chatty" and this alone led to some
>>>>> huge performance gains.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 6. We also looked at the structure of the scene graph itself and after
>>>>> studying products such as OpenSceneGraph, we refactored the JavaFX scene
>>>>> graph in such a way that it lends itself to optimised rendering much more
>>>>> easily.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 7. This is clearly not a "small" patch.  In fact to refer to it as a
>>>>> "patch" is probably rather inappropriate.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The end result is that we now have a fully-functional prototype of HPR and,
>>>>> already, we are seeing very significant performance improvements.
>>>>> 
>>>>> At the minimum, scene graph rendering performance has improved by 500% and,
>>>>> with judicious and sometimes "tricky" use of caching, we have seen
>>>>> improvements in performance of 10x or more.
>>>>> 
>>>>> And... we are only just *starting* with the performance optimisation phase.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The potential for HPR is massive as it opens-up the possibility for the
>>>>> JavaFX scene graph and the animation/transition infrastructure to be used
>>>>> for a whole new class of applications including games, advanced
>>>>> visualisations etc., without having to rely on imperative programming of a
>>>>> single Canvas node.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I believe that HPR, along with tremendous recent developments like JPro and
>>>>> the outstanding work by Gluon on mobiles and embedded devices, could
>>>>> position JavaFX to be the best graphics toolkit of any kind in any language
>>>>> and, be the ONLY *truly* cross-platform graphics technology available.
>>>>> 
>>>>> WORA for graphics and UIs is finally within reach!
>>>>> 
>>>>> Blessings,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Felix
>>>> 
> 