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#define PAGE Parallel Rendering
#define DESCRIPTION "Equalizer is the standard middleware to create and deploy parallel OpenGL-based applications."
#define KEYWORDS "parallel rendering, parallel OpenGL, Equalizer, OpenGL, scalable graphics, graphics cluster, graphics clusters, visualization, multi-GPU"

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<div class="float_right">
  <a href="/equalizergraphics.com/images/release-0.9.png"><img src="/equalizergraphics.com/images/release-0.9-small.jpg"
                                         alt="Cross-Segment Load-Balancing"></a>
  <div class="label">Cross-Segment Load-Balancing</div>
</div>
<p>
  Equalizer is the standard middleware to create and deploy parallel
  OpenGL-based applications. It enables applications to benefit from multiple
  graphics cards, processors and computers to scale the rendering performance,
  visual quality and display size. An Equalizer application runs unmodified on
  any visualization system, from a simple workstation to large scale graphics
  clusters, multi-GPU workstations and Virtual Reality installations.
</p>
<p>
  Equalizer drives the world's most advanced visualization systems, for example
  an ultra-high resolution CAVE driven by 24 4k projectors, a 72-tile stereo
  display walls as well as scalability clusters for interactive raytracing using
  hundreds of nodes.
</p>
<p>
  <a href="/equalizergraphics.com/api.html">Sequel</a> is an easily accessible interface to the
  Equalizer parallel rendering framework, and allows rapid development of
  clustered multi-GPU applications.
</p>
<p>
  <a href="/equalizergraphics.com/gpu-sd">GPU-SD</a> is a daemon and library for the discovery and
  announcement of graphics processing units using ZeroConf. It is used for
  auto-configuration of Equalizer applications.
</p>
<p>
  <a href="http://www.libcollage.net/">Collage</a> is a cross-platform C++
  library for building heterogenous, distributed applications. It is the
  multi-threaded cluster backend for Equalizer.
</p>
<p>
  <a href="https://github.com/Eyescale/Lunchbox">Lunchbox</a> is a C++ library
  for multi-threaded programming, providing OS abstraction, utility classes and
  high-performance primitives, such as atomic variables, spin locks and
  lock-free containers. It is used as a base library for Collage and Equalizer.
</p>

<h2>Benefits</h2>
<ul>
  <li><b>Increased Performance, Visual Quality and Display Size:</b> Equalizer
    contains the essence of 10+ years of experience in parallel and scalable
    rendering, easily integrated into your application.</li>
  <li><b>Fast Path for Parallel OpenGL Applications:</b> Equalizer is minimally
    invasive and provides the natural parallel execution model to exploit the
    parallelism of multicore, multi-GPU workstations and graphics clusters.</li>
  <li><b>Feature-Rich Framework:</b> Equalizer contains state-of-the-art
    scalable rendering algorithms, and its open development model ensures
    constant improvement. Equalizer applications are flexible and deployable in
    many, rapidly changing environments.</li>
  <li><b>Future-Proof:</b> An active development community and a liberal open
    source license provide cutting-edge features and ensure the safety of your
    investment.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Features</h2>
<p>
  Applications written using the <a href="/equalizergraphics.com/api.html">Equalizer framework</a>
  benefit from the following features:
</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="/equalizergraphics.com/configuration.html">Flexibility</a>: An Equalizer application is
    configured at run-time, allowing the same executable to run optimally on any
    configuration -- from laptops to large scale visualization clusters, driving
    a single window or a six-sided CAVE while using one or multiple graphics
    cards to render each view.</li>
  <li><a href="/equalizergraphics.com/scalability.html">Large Data Visualization</a>: An Equalizer
    application can aggregate the power of multiple processors, graphics cards
    and computers to scale the rendering performance, visual quality and display
    size. This allows virtually any data set to be rendered at any resolution at
    interactive framerates, given sufficient hardware resources.</li>
  <li><a href="/equalizergraphics.com/documents/design/immersive.html">Virtual Reality:</a> Equalizer
    applications can run seamlessly in Virtual Reality installations using
    active and passive stereo rendering, as well as head tracking for one or
    multiple observers.</li>
  <li><a href="http://www.libcollage.net/">Distributed Execution:</a> Equalizer
    includes Collage, an advanced library for distributed applications. The data
    distribution needed for cluster-based is made simple through versioned,
    distributed objects. Features like reliable multicast, InfiniBand support
    and data compression enable optimal performance on large-scale visualization
    clusters.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Project Mission</h2>
<p>
  Equalizer is an open platform for high-performance visualization:
</p>
<ul>
  <li><b>Vendor Independence:</b> The development is not governed by a single
    company. We work with several industry-leading hardware and software vendors
    as well as research institutions on improving Equalizer.</li>
  <li><b>Open Source:</b> Equalizer uses a liberal license which allows usage in
    both open source and commercial products. The license ensures progress on
    the core framework and protects the ISV's investment in the future.</li>
  <li><b>Open Community:</b> We encourage the usage in custom projects and
    welcome contributions to Equalizer by the community. We contribute our
    experience in parallel rendering back to the OpenGL community.</li>
</ul>

<h2>Compatibility</h2>
<div class="float_right">
  <a href="http://www.opengl.org"><img src="images/ogl.jpg"
                                       alt="OpenGL logo"></a>
</div>
<p>
  Equalizer is a cross-platform toolkit, available for Linux, Windows and Mac
  OS X and supports both 32-bit and 64-bit execution.
</p>
<p>
  Equalizer does not interfere with the application's OpenGL rendering
  code. Equalizer requires at a minimum OpenGL version 1.1 in order to run, but
  uses later OpenGL features and extensions where available.
</p>
<p>
  The Equalizer framework is licensed under the
  <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html">LGPL open source license</a>,
  which allows free usage in commercial and open source projects. Only changes
  to the framework itself have to be contributed back to open source.
</p>
<p>
  Consulting, software development service and support are available
  from <a href="http://www.eyescale.ch">Eyescale Software GmbH</a>.
</p>

<h2>Testimonials</h2>
<p>
  Please send us your <a href="mailto:info@equalizergraphics.com?subject=Feedback regarding Equalizer">feedback</a>.
</p>

<p class="quote">
  September 2012, Alessandro Febretti, Research Assistant
  and <a href="http://code.google.com/p/omegalib/">omegalib</a> developer,
  Ph.D. Student, Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at
  Chicago:
</p>
<p>
  I have been working with Equalizer for more than a year now and overall it has
  been a fantastic experience. Equalizer simplified my development work a whole
  lot.
</p>

<p class="quote">
  February 2009, Brian Gianforcarom, Computer Science at Rochester Institute of
  Technology:
</p>
<p>
  I've worked on projects trying to do similar things without Equalizer, and I
  can honestly say it was pretty bad. We only got it barely working. After
  finding Equalizer later, I can't imagine how much easier it would have been
  with such a tool.
  (<a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/513114/multi-headed-display-system">source</a>)
</p>

<p class="quote">
  November 2008, Dan Wilcox, developer at <a href="http://www.aec.at/futurelab_about_en.php">Ars Electronica Futurelab</a>:
</p>
<p>
  Equalizer abstracts the windowing and distribution of shared objects which,
  trust me, is well worth the overhead of learning it. It's one thing to have
  each machine running the same rendering thread and it's quite another to send
  control and input dynamically between them. Plus it runs on Mac, Windows, and
  Linux.
  (<a href="http://www.openframeworks.cc/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24110#p24110">source</a>)
</p>

<p class="quote">
  April 2008, Nicolas Cuntz, researcher at
    the <a href="http://www.cg.informatik.uni-siegen.de/">University of
    Siegen</a>:
</p>
<p>
  Equalizer bundles multi-node rendering and synchronization tools into an
  easy-to-use and well-structured object-oriented framework. Porting to
  Equalizer can be achieved without completely restructuring the application.
  However, one has to deal with data synchronization and possible problems
  related to threading and parallelism, which is a problem that cannot
  completely be delegated to a library.
</p>

<div class="footnote">
<p>
 Image copyright Realtime Technology AG, 2008.
</p>
<p>
  Linux&reg; is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Mac OS&reg; is a trademark of
  Apple Computer, Inc. OpenGL&reg; is a trademark of Silicon Graphics,
  Inc. Windows&reg; is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. The CAVE is a
  registered Trademark of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois at
  Chicago. All other products named are trademarks of their respective owners.
</p>
</div>

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