Distributed computation for computer animation

Computer animation is a very computationally intensive task. Recent developments in image synthesis, such as shadows, reflections and motion blur enhance the quality of computer animation, but also dramatically increase the amount of CPU time needed to do it. Fortunately, the computations involved with computer animation are easily decomposed into smaller tasks, such as rendering single frames or parts of a frame. This makes the problem an ideal candidate for "coarse-grain" parallel implementation. In order to provide the necessary cycles, unused idle time on personal workstations is used to provide a single large parallel computing resource. A survey of several schemes for coordinating this type of resource is presented, along with a detailed examination of a Unix based system currently in use at the University of Utah.