Introduction

Question 1

Name and briefly describe some of the mathematical areas which are important in low level graphics

Answer 1

Vectors and scalars
Dot products
matrixes 
tesslatation 
orientation and in particualar relative space 
normals

Question 2

3 mains APIs avaiable

Answer 2

OPenGL
DirectX
Metal

Question 3

Name some of the key areas of research in optimazatin

Answer 3

• taking care of the hardware and memory at a low level

- not using linked list and using either arrays or at a higher level of abstraction vectors

Question 4

Two main types of buffers and sorens advice when it comes to optimization of buffers

Answer 4

index - lists the formation of triangles
vertex - list of vertices in a mesh

buffers can be reused rather than recreated.

Question 5

Key points to memory

Answer 5

• modification and movement of memory has overhead
• hardware made up of ALU, CPU and registers
• solar system model of memory - cache to network and everything inbetween
• relative locality in memory is good. which can be achieved via vectors, matrixes, arrays etc…
• linked lists are bad.
• GPUs are different. processing simple calculations in parallel.