Tracking graphics state for networked rendering

As networks get faster, it becomes more feasible to render large data sets remotely. For example, it is useful to run large scientific simulations on remote compute servers but visualize the results of those simulations on one or more local displays. The WireGL project at Stanford is researching new techniques for rendering over a network. For many applications, we can render remotely over a gigabit network to a tiled display with little or no performance loss over running locally. One of the elements of WireGL that makes this performance possible is our ability to track the graphics state of a running application.