Add TSC Meeting Notes April 18, 2023.

Signed-off-by: Andre Pradhana <[email protected]>

Author: apradhana

tsc/meetings/2023-04-18.md

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+Minutes from 167th OpenVDB TSC meeting, April 18th, 2023
+
+Attendees: *Jeff* L., *Dan* B., *Ken* M., *Dan* B., *Rich* J,
+*Andre* P.
+
+Additional Attendees: Sebastian Gaida
+
+Regrets: *Nick* A., *Greg* H.
+
+Agenda:
+
+1) Confirm quorum
+2) Secretary
+3) Forum
+4) PR-1606: Boost UUID
+5) VFX Reference Platform
+6) Boost::any PR
+7) Discussion on read-only data structure
+8) VDB 11
+9) Next Meeting
+
+------------
+
+1) Confirm quorum
+
+Quorum is present.
+
+2) Secretary
+
+Secretary is Andre Pradhana.
+
+3) Forum
+
+Nothing to discuss.
+
+4) PR-1606: Boost UUID
+
+It compiles. We agree to review the PR.
+
+5) VFX Reference Platform
+
+VFX Reference Platform asks for a release draft for 2024. We
+agree to release VDB 11.0 in November. Our plan will be communicated
+to VFX Reference Platform to confirm that we are moving to VDB 11 later
+in the year.
+
+6) Boost::any PR
+
+Once this PR is approved, OpenVDB will optionally depend on boost. It makes
+sense to have a lite-CI for OpenVDB that does not support delayed loading
+nor depends on blosc.
+
+7) Discussion on read-only data structure
+
+Ideas discussed are:
+ - Having a read-only tree in OpenVDB, for example utilizing a ring
+   buffer, which replaces pages instead of loading new pages. The
+   argument against adding a ring-buffer based grid is that the OS
+   can do it for us if we use delayed/partial loading. However, this
+   approach makes the OS to do the swapping. This approach is similar
+   to NanoVDB. The advantage of it is that a user can define the allocated
+   memory footprint upfront.
+ - A refinement of the idea above is to store the evicted data locally.
+ - Another approach discussed is by reading/loading the data per-
+   bouding-box.
+ - Build a prefectching tools.
+
+Other points raised includes:
+ - The need to trim down the core code-base, so that it is easier
+   to add a new grid. Currently, there are a lot of virtual methods
+   and expected functions that are required to build a new grid type.
+ - In terms of workflow, Houdini uses viewport to control which
+   data should be loaded in memory.
+ - People read-only tree for rendering.
+ - Talked about strategy to parallelize an algorithm that delay-load
+   leaf nodes using mutex locks.
+
+8) VDB 11
+What can go to VDB 11:
+ - Updates to NanoVDB.
+ - Offset to recenter root node.
+ - Hollow VDB.
+ - VDB Merge needs to work for packed primitives.
+ - Example for fluids (due for SIGGRAPH).
+ - VDB Fillet.
+
+9) Next Meeting
+
+Next meeting is on April 25th, 2023. 2pm-3pm EDT (GMT-4).