README.md

smallpt

About

The Rosetta smallpt project: the same path tracer (modifications of Kevin Baeson's 99 line C++ path tracer) written in multiple languages.

Note: I deliberately chose for the same software design for all programming languages out of clarity and performance reasons (this can conflict with the nature of declarative/functional programming languages).

Features

Current languages:

• C
  • single threaded
  • multi threaded (OpenMP)
• C++
  • single threaded
  • multi threaded (Windows Threads)
  • multi threaded (OpenMP)
• C#
  • single threaded
  • multi threaded
• CoffeeScript
• CUDA
• Erlang
• GLSL
• Haskell
• Java
• JavaScript
• J#
• Prolog
• Python 2
  • Python
  • Python + NumPy
• Python 3
  • Python
  • Python + NumPy
  • Python + Taichi
• Racket
• TypeScript

Performance comparison

In order to give a very rough performance comparison, the wall clock time is measured of a single run to generate an image of resolution 1024x768 using 64spp. All single process - single threads experiments output the current progression to standard output. All multi process - multi threaded experiments do not output the current progression to standard output (this can change in the future).

System:

• OS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit
• CPU: Intel i7-4770K @ 3,50 GHz (TB @ 3,9 GHz) with 8GB DDR3 @ 1600 MHz
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 with 4 GB GDDR5

Note: the random number generators used, differ between the languages and their implementations. It makes no sense to use the same random number generator in all implementations (i.e. C++ vs CUDA) and would introduce a huge burden to explicitly pass the state in languages such as Prolog.

Single process - Single threaded

Programming Language	Compiler/Interpreter	Wall clock (64 spp)
C	MSVC++ 15.5.9	00h 01m 51.88s
C++	MSVC++ 15.5.9	00h 01m 21.32s
C#	CLR 4.6.1055.0	00h 01m 30.56s
CoffeeScript	CC 1.11.1/Chrome	00h 04m 19.63s
Erlang	ERTS/BEAM 8.0	00h 59m 45.30s
Haskell	GHC 8.0.1	00h 10m 35.55s
Haskell	GHCi 8.0.1	02h 14m 54.00s
Java	JVM 1.8	00h 01m 47.89s
JavaScript	Chrome	00h 06m 27.63s
J#	CLR 14.00	00h 06m 14.62s
Prolog	SWI-Prolog 7.2.3	/
Python 2.7	CPython (Anaconda 4.1.12)	08h 24m 40.88s
Python 2.7	CPython (Canopy 1.5.2)	08h 35m 03.19s
Python 2.7	IronPython 2.7.6	06h 32m 11.48s
Python 2.7	PyPy 5.6.0	00h 20m 47.33s
Python 3.5	CPython (Anaconda 4.1.12)	09h 37m 05.13s
Python 2.7 + NumPy	CPython (Anaconda 4.1.12)	09h 58m 25.18s
Python 2.7 + NumPy	CPython (Canopy 1.5.2)	10h 43m 04.10s
Python 3.5 + NumPy	CPython (Anaconda 4.1.12)	10h 20m 46.47s
Racket	DrRacket 6.6	00h 49m 39.43s
TypeScript	TSC 2.0.10/Chrome	00h 08m 10.58s

Multi process - Multi threaded

Programming Language	Compiler/Interpreter	Wall clock (64 spp)
C + OpenMP	MSVC++ 15.5.9	00h 00m 22.09s
C++	MSVC++ 15.5.9	00h 00m 16.71s
C++ + OpenMP	MSVC++ 15.5.9	00h 00m 25.97s
C#	CLR 4.6.1055.0	00h 00m 24.16s
CUDA	MSVC++ 15.5.9/NVCC 9.2	00h 00m 07.89s

Panorma (old version)