Pipeline Optimizations

The geometry pipeline system uses a number of optimization techniques to reduce the amount of processing necessary:

• Channels allow modifiers to operate on a subset of an object's state. Only the channels that are needed are actually copied. See Channel Locking for more information.
• A Cache System stores the end result of applying all modifications. Validity intervals are associated with each modification which the geometry pipeline system uses to compute whether the cached representation is accurate.

In order to assure that the pipeline runs efficiently it is important that the channel requests and interval validation is performed correctly.