A QoS Aware Resource Allocation Strategy for Mobile Graphics Rendering With Cloud Support

Abstract

With the rapid development of cloud technology, many services have been transferred from local computers to the cloud-based platform, which decreases the amount of computation done on the former. The local computer could thus be developed in the direction of portability and power saving. Graphics processing, apart from providing user interfaces featuring diversified special effects, is also significant in terms of application programs and play interactions. It is exactly on the basis of the concept of graphics processing that cloud-support rendering is developed, which is aimed to improve the graphics efficiency in mobile devices, via the graphics processing units in the cloud-based platform. The cloud-based platform and the mobile devices are usually connected by the Internet; however, as remote rendering might call for greater network bandwidth, its efficiency will be compromised if the network bandwidth is not stable. Given this limitation, this paper sets out to propose a quality-of-service-aware resource allocation strategy for mobile 3D graphics rendering, which is a hybrid rendering technology combining the client-side graphics processing capabilities with the graphics processing units in the cloud-based platform. When network bandwidth is not stable, the technology is able to assess the current network bandwidth, and dynamically configure the rendered frames on the client side and cloud-based platforms. Even when the client side could not access the network, it would still be possible to carry out the drawing through the graphics processing units on the local computer. Three applications are tested in this research: the technology can increase the frame rate by an average of 44.99% when the bandwidth is 10% greater than the minimum limit, by an average of 44.57% when the bandwidth is less than the minimum limit, by an average of 30.86% when the bandwidth is 10% less than the minimum limit, and by an average of 33.74% when the bandwidth is not stable.