RenderCore -- a new WebGPU-based rendering engine for ROOT-EVE

• Main Authors: Bohak, Ciril, Kovalskyi, Dmytro, Linev, Sergey, Tadel, Alja Mrak, Strban, Sebastien, Tadel, Matevz, Yagil, Avi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 18-12-2023
• Subjects: Computer Science - Graphics; Physics - Computational Physics; Physics - High Energy Physics - Experiment
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2312.11729

ROOT-Eve (REve), the new generation of the ROOT event-display module, uses a
web server-client model to guarantee exact data translation from the
experiments' data analysis frameworks to users' browsers. Data is then
displayed in various views, including high-precision 2D and 3D graphics views,
currently driven by THREE.js rendering engine based on WebGL technology.
RenderCore, a computer graphics research-oriented rendering engine, has been
integrated into REve to optimize rendering performance and enable the use of
state-of-the-art techniques for object highlighting and object selection. It
also allowed for the implementation of optimized instanced rendering through
the usage of custom shaders and rendering pipeline modifications. To further
the impact of this investment and ensure the long-term viability of REve,
RenderCore is being refactored on top of WebGPU, the next-generation GPU
interface for browsers that supports compute shaders, storage textures and
introduces significant improvements in GPU utilization. This has led to
optimization of interchange data formats, decreased server-client traffic, and
improved offloading of data visualization algorithms to the GPU. FireworksWeb,
a physics analysis-oriented event display of the CMS experiment, is used to
demonstrate the results, focusing on high-granularity calorimeters and
targeting high data-volume events of heavy-ion collisions and High-Luminosity
LHC. The next steps and directions are also discussed.