Cache-rings for memory efficient isosurface construction

Processor speeds continue to increase at faster rates than memory speeds. As this performance gap widens, it becomes increasingly important to develop "memory-conscious" algorithms - programs that still optimize instruction count and algorithmic complexity, but that also integrate optimizations for data locality and cache performance. In this paper we present a topological isosurface extraction algorithm which utilizes a "cache-ring" data structure to optimize memory performance. We compare our algorithm to an analogous edge-hashing algorithm which, though functionally equivalent, gives less priority to memory performance. While our algorithm actually executes more instructions during execution, we nonetheless see a speed-up over the traditional method, as we more-than-compensate for the extra instructions with superior memory performance.