Evolution of Vertex and Pixel Shaders

Abstract

Abstract. In real-time rendering, objects are represented using polygons or triangles. Triangles are easy to render and graphics hardware is highly optimized for rendering of triangles. Initially, the shading computations were carried out by dedicated hardwired algorithms for each vertex and then interpolated by the rasterizer. Todays graphics hardware contains vertex and pixel shaders which can be reprogrammed by the user. Vertex and pixel shaders allow almost arbitrary computations per vertex respectively per pixel. We have developed a system to evolve such programs. The system runs on a variety of graphics hardware due to the use of NVIDIA's high level Cg shader language. Fitness of the shaders is determined by user interaction. Both fixed length and variable length genomes are supported. The system is highly customizable. Each individual consists of a series of meta commands. The resulting Cg program is translated into the low level commands which are required for the particular graphics hardware.

A SIMD Interpreter for Genetic Programming on GPU Graphics Cards

“…Perhaps unsurprisingly the first uses of graphics processing units (GPUs) with genetic programming were for image generation [Ebner et al, 2005] & its refs. [Harding and Banzhaf, 2007, Section 3] described the various major high level language tools for programming GPUs (Sh, Brook, PyGPU and microsoft Accelerator).…”

Creating and Debugging Performance CUDA C

“…This is closer to the original purpose of graphics hardware, nevertheless Ebner et al [5] show genetic programming could evolve GPU code (vertex and pixel shaders written in Cg [6]) to generate images. However Fok et al [7] were the first to implement a general purpose evolutionary algorithm on a GPU.…”

Graphics processing units and genetic programming: an overview

“…Doubtless this will soon change.) Ebner et al [44] use a similar approach to evolve new pixel shaders for use within interactive evolution. However, rather than manipulating assembler directly, they use genetic programming to create shaders written in the high level graphics language Cg.…”