Day 1 Select Sessions

9:10am – 10:15amKeynote
“Real-Time Path Tracing and Beyond”

Petrik Clarberg, NVIDIA

Abstract: Real-time graphics is on the cusp of a historic transition to path tracing. With recent advances in hardware ray tracing, systems research, stochastic light sampling, and denoising, we show that complex light transport effects can be path traced in real time on scenes with billions of triangles and millions of emitters. This includes the well-known PBRT research scenes. These results can fundamentally transform real-time graphics research. The talk is divided into two parts. First, we show visual results and discuss how we built the research path tracer. Second, we discuss the research questions that come next for our field, building on the foundation of real-time path tracing. We focus on what will be required to reach our dream of photorealistic rendering of truly lifelike content in real time.

Petrik Clarberg is a Principal Research Scientist at NVIDIA Research, where he joined the Real-Time Rendering Research team in 2016. Most recently he has focused on systems and algorithmic research for real-time path tracing. Prior to NVIDIA, he was a real-time rendering researcher in the industry for many years and co-founded a startup. Petrik's passion for graphics started with the 1990s demo scene. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Lund University, Sweden.

10:25am – 10:45amInvited Talk (Diversity & Inclusion)
“Sharing Experiences on Being a Woman in Computer Science”

Cristina Nader Vasconcelos, Google Research

Abstract: In this talk, I will talk about women pioneers in computing and why we need women in computer science. I will share some initiatives and resources available on the topic and how to get involved in your community.

Cristina Nader Vasconcelos is a Research Software Engineer at Google Research, Brain team in Montreal Canada. She obtained her PhD from PUC-Rio/Brazil in Computer Graphics, and she is interested in Machine Learning, Parallel Processing, Computer Graphics/Vision, and Speech Recognition. Before joining Google she worked as an Associate professor at UFF/Brazil.

Day 2 Select Sessions

9:05am – 10:10amKeynote
“Towards Computer-Assisted High Performance for Graphics”

Shoaib Kamil, Adobe

Abstract: While peak hardware performance has increased rapidly in the previous decades, programmers continue to be tasked with the tedious, difficult work of hand-optimizing code to harness the additional performance available in modern hardware. In this talk, we explore ways in which programming language technologies and techniques can be leveraged to make it easier for programmers to write high performance code, leveraging recent advances in both hardware and software. The talk will outline approaches relevant to graphics, and show the beginnings of how such techniques could revolutionize high performance programming in the field.

Shoaib Kamil is a principal research scientist who leads the Programming Languages & Performance (PLP) group in the Computational Creativity Lab at Adobe Research. His main areas of focus include compilers, computer-assisted programming, and high performance computing. Prior to joining Adobe, he worked at MIT CSAIL and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Berkeley.

10:25am – 10:45amInvited Talk (Diversity & Inclusion)
“Diversity in Our Time: A Rendering Perspective”

Apollo Ellis, NVIDIA

Abstract: We will discuss an atypical journey into computer graphics. We'll battle the roughness of the bay area street life, schizophrenia, and believe it or not being at top tier schools in computer science, PhDs in rendering, and even getting a best paper placing at HPG. If you thought you had reasons for imposter syndrome, this might be relatable. Or will it? Either way if we're theoretically going to have a diverse mindset, work force, and community we need to examine these types of outliers. Consider this a firefly in your path tracer... do we know the proper probability distribution function? Can we be unbiased? Get ready for a trip up the graphics pipeline with a serious twist!

Dr Apollo Ellis is a long time HPG attendee, previous winner of an HPG best paper runner up award, and graduate of UC Berkeley CS (BA), UT Austin CS (MS), and UIUC CS (Ph.D). He helped found and direct the HPG diversity scholarship program and served on the HPG committee for the last four years. He currently works at Nvidia on the Omniverse rendering team, as a senior ray tracing engineer.

Day 3 Select Sessions

9:05am — 10:10amHot3D Invited Talks

Naveen Matam, Intel

Naveen Matam is an IP Architect for the GPU at Intel Corporation. He leads the definition of IP configurations across different segments, integrated, discrete and datacenter. Since joining Intel in 2000, Naveen has worked on design, micro architecture and HW architecture across several parts of the GPU pipeline. He was instrumental in various innovations in the EU for 12 years including development of ISA for 3 generations. Naveen holds a bachelor's degree in electrical and electronics from Bangalore University, India and master's degree from Arizona State University.

Takahiro Harada, AMD

Takahiro Harada is a fellow engineer at AMD. He has been leading research and development of Radeon ProRender (a global illumination renderer), HIP Ray Tracing (HIP RT), Orochi at Advanced Rendering Research Group. He is also leading software development in Morgenrot, Inc.. He developed Forward+ and a full GPU rigid body simulation solver in the past. Before joining AMD, he engaged in research and development on real-time physics simulation on PC and game consoles at Havok. Before coming to the industry, he was in academia as an assistant professor at the university of Tokyo where he earned his Ph.D. in Engineering.

Brian Budge, Meta Reality Labs

Brian Budge got his PhD from UC Davis working on photorealistic rendering research. He went on to become a founding member of the Autodesk Cloud Rendering Service, where he was the primary architect of the first versions of the renderer. He took a hiatus from graphics for about 6 years, first working as a tech lead for the Google Borg scheduling service and the Google Clips AI-curating video device. Brian then went on to Oculus Research, now called Meta Reality Labs Research, first in a computer vision and machine perception team, and for the last 3 years has been in the Graphics Research team where he is leading and managing a small group of researchers and research engineers working on various aspects related to rendering.

Sarita Adve, UIUC

Sarita Adve is the Richard T. Cheng Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a computer architect with broad research interests spanning hardware, programming languages, runtimes, and applications. Her most recent work is on systems for extended reality (XR). Her group built ILLIXR (Illinois eXtended Reality), the first open source end-to-end XR system and testbed for XR systems research. She chairs the ILLIXR consortium to democratize XR systems research, development, and benchmarking. Her work on the data-race-free, Java, and C++ memory consistency models forms the foundation for memory models used in most hardware and software systems today. She is also known for her work on heterogeneous systems and software-driven approaches for hardware resiliency. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the ACM and IEEE, and received the ACM/IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy award. As ACM SIGARCH chair, she co-founded the CARES movement, winner of the CRA distinguished service award, to address discrimination and harassment in Computer Science research events. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

10:25am – 10:45amInvited Talk (Diversity & Inclusion)
“On Being a Computer Scientist: If I had a DeLorean”

Aaron Lefohn, NVIDIA

Aaron Lefohn, Vice President, Graphics Research at NVIDIA, leads NVIDIA's Real-Time Rendering Research team. Aaron has led real-time rendering and graphics programming model research teams for over 14 years and has productized many research ideas into games, film rendering, GPU hardware, and GPU APIs.

His teams' inventions have played key roles in bringing ray tracing to real-time graphics, combining AI and computer graphics, and pioneering real-time AI computer graphics. NVIDIA products derived from Aaron's teams' inventions include DLSS, RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI), NVIDIA's Real-Time Denoisers (NRD), the OptiX Deep Learning Denoiser, and more. The teams' current focus areas include real-time physically-based light transport, AI computer graphics, image metrics, and graphics systems.

Petrik Clarberg's real-time path tracing keynote on Monday of this week described some of the recent research in Aaron's team.

Day 4 Select Sessions

9:10am – 10:10amKeynote
“Beyond the Metaverse — Towards Human-Centric XR”

Gordon Wetzstein, Stanford

Abstract: Virtual and augmented reality technology enables us to create unprecedented experiences, for example to meet people for work or fun in digital spaces. Users of this technology, however, would greatly benefit from enhanced visual comfort and perceptual realism of emerging XR displays. Moreover, the technology components developed for wearable computing systems can also augment human performance, for example by helping people see better or potentially improve their cognitive performance or sleep behavior. In this talk, we will discuss several ideas and emerging technologies that strive towards human-centric XR.

Gordon Wetzstein is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Computer Science at Stanford University. He is the leader of the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and a faculty co-director of the Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering. At the intersection of computer graphics and vision, computational optics, and applied vision science, Prof. Wetzstein's research has a wide range of applications in next-generation imaging, display, wearable computing, and microscopy systems. Prior to joining Stanford in 2014, Prof. Wetzstein was a Research Scientist at MIT, he received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia in 2011 and graduated with Honors from the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany before that. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, an ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an SPIE Early Career Achievement Award, a Terman Fellowship, an Okawa Research Grant, the Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year 2017 Award, an Alain Fournier Ph.D. Dissertation Award, and a Laval Virtual Award as well as Best Paper and Demo Awards at ICCP 2011, 2014, and 2016 and at ICIP 2016.

10:25am – 10:45amInvited Talk (Diversity & Inclusion)
“Reaching the Unreachables — Equal eSports Initiative”

Gabriela Antonczyk, Deutsche Telekom AG

Gabriela Antonczyk is Brand Manager at Deutsche Telekom. In this role she leads various international projects within the Brand Experience team. Most recently she has been involved in the Equal eSports Initiative driven by Deutsche Telekom together with Partners: esports player foundation and SK Gaming. The initiative is mainly focusing on the empowerment of female and non-binary players to get on top and reach their dreams in the eSports and gaming world.

Prior to her role as Brand Manager, she led projects in the area of Technology and Innovation focusing on the development of new use cases in the 5G and AR/VR area together with Partners and Start-ups.

In-Person Event

7:00pm PDTKeynote
“The Journey to Nanite”

Brian Karis, Epic Games

Brian Karis is an Engineering Fellow in graphics at Epic Games. Most recently he has led the development of Nanite for UE5. Before this he was most known for work on physically based shading and temporal anti-aliasing although has touched most areas of real-time computer graphics throughout his career. Prior to Epic he worked at Human Head Studios.