Visualization Update

June 18, 2009

Kelly Gaither, GIG Area Director DV

Background•26% of 2008 user survey respondents

use TG resources for interactive visualization, steering, and data analysis.

•Visualization activities are coordinated through the Visualization working group (led by Mike Papka - ANL, and Kelly Gaither – TACC and coordinated by Joe Insley, ANL).– Over the last year, the group has met the first

Tuesday of every month.•Work over the last year has focused on:

– Reducing barriers to entry and improving usability through TG Visualization Gateway and TGUP visualization portlets.

– Leveraging software and activities developed at TG RPs.

Software Activities•TeraGrid Visualization Gateway – community access via dynamic accounts is in final testing and will be deployed next quarter. Additionally, a volume rendering portlet has been added. Paraview is currently the method for visualization, but VisIt is being considered as well. (Joe Insley, Mike Papka – ANL contact)

•EnVision is a web based interface that simplifies basic visualization capabilities (isosurfaces, particle traces, cutting planes, etc.). Has been deployed and is available for public use. (Greg P. Johnson, Kelly Gaither – TACC contact)

•ORNL is working with Utah to integrate VisTrails into VisIt (Sean Ahern – ORNL contact)

Software Activities•New version of Star Splatter viewer for looking at SPH data (Joel Welling – PSC contact).

•Purdue TeraDRE - supports Maya , Blender, POVray, and Gelato and allows users to render 3D animations using a cluster of over 4000 machines (Dave Braun – Purdue contact).

•IU Render Portal – Condor render portal that uses available student systems as a distributed render cluster (Mike Boyles – IU Contact).

•VAPOR – Visualization and analysis platform for Ocean, Atmosphere and Solar research (John Clyne – NCAR contact).

TG 09•There will be a half day visualization tutorial at TG 09 that currently has approximately 35 attendees – participation from ANL, TACC and NCAR.

•The “Visualization Gallery” will happen again this year:– 12 visualization submissions– Will be displayed on Tuesday night with the reception

Current Efforts:•Visualization working group is working on a white paper to lay a foundation for the future directions for petascale visualization and data analysis. – The group meets once a week on Wednesdays at

3pm– Current material is on the wiki at

http://www.teragridforum.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Visualization#Petascale_Visualization_and_Data_Analysis_White_Paper

– We will distribute the first version of the white paper at the science advisory board for comment from the community

– Second version will be distributed to the TG forum for the Sept quarterly meeting

Future Efforts:•NSF has recommended that two resources be funded for the XD Vis program– First is a large shared memory machine that will

primarily focus on large scale data analysis and data mining with visualization capabilities

– Second is a large distributed memory machine that will primarily focus on large scale remote interactive visualization and will provide data mining and data analysis capabilities

For Questions:•Email Kelly Gaither at kelly@tacc.utexas.edu or to get the entire vis working group, email viz-wg@teragrid.org.