34,756 research outputs found
Towards Expressive and Versatile Visualization-as-a-Service (VaaS)
The rapid growth of data in scientific visualization has posed significant challenges to the scalability and availability of interactive visualization tools. These challenges can be largely attributed to the limitations of traditional monolithic applications in handling large datasets and accommodating multiple users or devices. To address these issues, the Visualization-as-a-Service (VaaS) architecture has emerged as a promising solution. VaaS leverages cloud-based visualization capabilities to provide on-demand and cost-effective interactive visualization. Existing VaaS has been simplistic by design with focuses on task-parallelism with single-user-per-device tasks for predetermined visualizations. This dissertation aims to extend the capabilities of VaaS by exploring data-parallel visualization services with multi-device support and hypothesis-driven explorations. By incorporating stateful information and enabling dynamic computation, VaaS\u27 performance and flexibility for various real-world applications is improved. This dissertation explores the history of monolithic and VaaS architectures, the design and implementations of 3 new VaaS applications, and a final exploration of the future of VaaS. This research contributes to the advancement of interactive scientific visualization, addressing the challenges posed by large datasets and remote collaboration scenarios
Web-Based Visualization of Very Large Scientific Astronomy Imagery
Visualizing and navigating through large astronomy images from a remote
location with current astronomy display tools can be a frustrating experience
in terms of speed and ergonomics, especially on mobile devices. In this paper,
we present a high performance, versatile and robust client-server system for
remote visualization and analysis of extremely large scientific images.
Applications of this work include survey image quality control, interactive
data query and exploration, citizen science, as well as public outreach. The
proposed software is entirely open source and is designed to be generic and
applicable to a variety of datasets. It provides access to floating point data
at terabyte scales, with the ability to precisely adjust image settings in
real-time. The proposed clients are light-weight, platform-independent web
applications built on standard HTML5 web technologies and compatible with both
touch and mouse-based devices. We put the system to the test and assess the
performance of the system and show that a single server can comfortably handle
more than a hundred simultaneous users accessing full precision 32 bit
astronomy data.Comment: Published in Astronomy & Computing. IIPImage server available from
http://iipimage.sourceforge.net . Visiomatic code and demos available from
http://www.visiomatic.org
Methods and design issues for next generation network-aware applications
Networks are becoming an essential component of modern cyberinfrastructure and this work describes methods of designing distributed applications for high-speed networks to improve application scalability, performance and capabilities. As the amount of data generated by scientific applications continues to grow, to be able to handle and process it, applications should be designed to use parallel, distributed resources and high-speed networks. For scalable application design developers should move away from the current component-based approach and implement instead an integrated, non-layered architecture where applications can use specialized low-level interfaces. The main focus of this research is on interactive, collaborative visualization of large datasets. This work describes how a visualization application can be improved through using distributed resources and high-speed network links to interactively visualize tens of gigabytes of data and handle terabyte datasets while maintaining high quality. The application supports interactive frame rates, high resolution, collaborative visualization and sustains remote I/O bandwidths of several Gbps (up to 30 times faster than local I/O). Motivated by the distributed visualization application, this work also researches remote data access systems. Because wide-area networks may have a high latency, the remote I/O system uses an architecture that effectively hides latency. Five remote data access architectures are analyzed and the results show that an architecture that combines bulk and pipeline processing is the best solution for high-throughput remote data access. The resulting system, also supporting high-speed transport protocols and configurable remote operations, is up to 400 times faster than a comparable existing remote data access system. Transport protocols are compared to understand which protocol can best utilize high-speed network connections, concluding that a rate-based protocol is the best solution, being 8 times faster than standard TCP. An HD-based remote teaching application experiment is conducted, illustrating the potential of network-aware applications in a production environment. Future research areas are presented, with emphasis on network-aware optimization, execution and deployment scenarios
Cluster-based interactive volume rendering with Simian
technical reportCommodity-based computer clusters offer a cost-effective alternative to traditional largescale, tightly coupled computers as a means to provide high-performance computational and visualization services. The Center for the Simulation of Accidental Fires and Explosions (C-SAFE) at the University of Utah employs such a cluster, and we have begun to experiment with cluster-based visualization services. In particular, we seek to develop an interactive volume rendering tool for navigating and visualizing large-scale scientific datasets. Using Simian, an OpenGL volume renderer, we examine two approaches to cluster-based interactive volume rendering: (1) a ?cluster-aware? version of the application that makes explicit use of remote nodes through a message-passing interface, and (2) the unmodified application running atop the Chromium clustered rendering framework. This paper provides a detailed comparison of the two approaches by carefully considering the key issues that arise when parallelizing Simian. These issues include the richness of user interaction; the distribution of volumetric datasets and proxy geometry; and the degree of interactivity provided by the image rendering and compositing schemes. The results of each approach when visualizing two large-scale C-SAFE datasets are given, and we discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages that were considered when developing our cluster-based interactive volume rendering application
VisIVOWeb: A WWW Environment for Large-Scale Astrophysical Visualization
This article presents a newly developed Web portal called VisIVOWeb that aims
to provide the astrophysical community with powerful visualization tools for
large-scale data sets in the context of Web 2.0. VisIVOWeb can effectively
handle modern numerical simulations and real-world observations. Our
open-source software is based on established visualization toolkits offering
high-quality rendering algorithms. The underlying data management is discussed
with the supported visualization interfaces and movie-making functionality. We
introduce VisIVOWeb Network, a robust network of customized Web portals for
visual discovery, and VisIVOWeb Connect, a lightweight and efficient solution
for seamlessly connecting to existing astrophysical archives. A significant
effort has been devoted for ensuring interoperability with existing tools by
adhering to IVOA standards. We conclude with a summary of our work and a
discussion on future developments
VisIVO - Integrated Tools and Services for Large-Scale Astrophysical Visualization
VisIVO is an integrated suite of tools and services specifically designed for
the Virtual Observatory. This suite constitutes a software framework for
effective visual discovery in currently available (and next-generation) very
large-scale astrophysical datasets. VisIVO consists of VisiVO Desktop - a stand
alone application for interactive visualization on standard PCs, VisIVO Server
- a grid-enabled platform for high performance visualization and VisIVO Web - a
custom designed web portal supporting services based on the VisIVO Server
functionality. The main characteristic of VisIVO is support for
high-performance, multidimensional visualization of very large-scale
astrophysical datasets. Users can obtain meaningful visualizations rapidly
while preserving full and intuitive control of the relevant visualization
parameters. This paper focuses on newly developed integrated tools in VisIVO
Server allowing intuitive visual discovery with 3D views being created from
data tables. VisIVO Server can be installed easily on any web server with a
database repository. We discuss briefly aspects of our implementation of VisiVO
Server on a computational grid and also outline the functionality of the
services offered by VisIVO Web. Finally we conclude with a summary of our work
and pointers to future developments
Development of Distributed Research Center for analysis of regional climatic and environmental changes
We present an approach and first results of a collaborative project being carried out by a joint team of researchers from the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems, Russia and Earth Systems Research Center UNH, USA. Its main objective is development of a hardware and software platform prototype of a Distributed Research Center (DRC) for monitoring and projecting of regional climatic and environmental changes in the Northern extratropical areas. The DRC should provide the specialists working in climate related sciences and decision-makers with accurate and detailed climatic characteristics for the selected area and reliable and affordable tools for their in-depth statistical analysis and studies of the effects of climate change. Within the framework of the project, new approaches to cloud processing and analysis of large geospatial datasets (big geospatial data) inherent to climate change studies are developed and deployed on technical platforms of both institutions. We discuss here the state of the art in this domain, describe web based information-computational systems developed by the partners, justify the methods chosen to reach the project goal, and briefly list the results obtained so far
Mathematical Modelling of Chemical Diffusion through Skin using Grid-based PSEs
A Problem Solving Environment (PSE) with connections to remote distributed Grid processes is developed. The Grid simulation is itself a parallel process and allows steering of individual or multiple runs of the core computation of chemical diffusion through the stratum corneum, the outer layer of the skin. The effectiveness of this Grid-based approach in improving the quality of the simulation is assessed
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