Optimised, high-performance, multi-threaded rendering pipeline

[Tobias Bley]

A very short answer ;) ….

Do you have any URL?





> Am 25.11.2016 um 12:19 schrieb Felix Bembrick <felix.bembrick at gmail.com>:
> 
> 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
>>>>> 
>>