insideHPC » Visualization

NICE EnginFrame 2013 Enables Remote Visualization Sessions in the Technical Cloud

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:29:20 +0000

Today Italian HPC solution provider NICE announced the release of the EnginFrame 2013.0 software. Designed for technical computing users in a broad range of markets, EnginFrame simplifies engineering and scientific workflows, increasing productivity and streamlining data and resource management.

With EnginFrame 2013.0 we have further strengthened our technology leadership in the HPC Portal market” , said Giuseppe Ugolotti, CEO of NICE. “NICE EnginFrame is a critical component for anyone who wants to create a technical Cloud that can run at the same time both HPC and interactive workload.”

As an HPC Portal, EnginFrame 2013.0 now offers built-in management of 3D and 2D remote visualization sessions, improved data transfer capabilities and a great number of new features and enhancements addressing both end users’ and system administrators’ needs. Leveraging all the major HPC job schedulers and remote visualization technologies, EnginFrame translates user clicks into the appropriate actions to submit HPC jobs, create remote visualization sessions, and monitor workloads on distributed resources.

Read the Full Story.

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Video: HPC in Astrophysics

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:34:31 +0000

In this video from the 2013 HPC User Forum, Don Lamb from the University of Chicago presents: HPC in Astrophysics.

Download the slides (PDF) or check out the HPC User Forum Video Gallery.

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XSEDE Resources Play Key Role in Research on Black Holes

Ralph — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:00:59 +0000

Over at NICS, Scott Gibson writes that researchers have applied HPC to produce a highly efficient graphics engine that reveals in 3D what’s going on in very complicated astrophysical flows. These simulations also allow researchers to present their results to a wider audience.

McKinney and his research team colleagues convey in recent a Science paper how, through the use of simulations, they discovered that the behavior of black holes that have thick accretion disks differs from longstanding assumptions. The belief has been that accretion disks lie flat along the outer edges of black holes while the relativistic jets shoot out perpendicularly to the disks. However, the simulations showed that the configuration becomes more complex at large distances from the black hole spin axis, with the jets becoming parallel to, but offset from, the accretion disk’s rotational axis; in the process, the disk warps and the jet bends, influencing what one sees at different viewing angles. McKinney explained that key in making this discovery was being able to reduce the symmetry of the problem in their numerical code. To do that, the researchers used spherical polar coordinates that employ radius and two different angles to describe the coordinates. As a result of their approach, they were able to capture the black hole’s asymmetrical shape.

Read the Full Story.

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3D Electronic Model-Based Design at Gulfstream

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:40:23 +0000

In this video from the 2013 HPC User Forum, Jeff Kreide from Gulfstream presents: 3D Electronic Model-Based Design.

Download the slides (PDF) or check out the HPC User Forum Video Gallery.

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Video: CreativeC Challenges HPC Conventions

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:56:18 +0000

In this video, Dan Olds from Gabriel Consulting visits the CreativeC booth at the GPU Technology Conference. As an HPC Consulting company, CreativeC builds scalable computing solutions and video wall display systems.

One of the coolest things was a demo of their new Scorpii project. Scorpii is a visualization system. At the show, it used two systems with six GPUs to generate a Toy-based molecular dynamics model and another system with three GPUs to project the model on nine displays in real time. It’s an affordable platform that allows researchers to generate their simulations and visualize the results quickly, rather than wait hours for the program to execute on a traditional supercomputer. On the video, Tim Thomas, physicist and Deputy Director of UNM Advanced Research Computing (also a CreativeC consultant) walks me through the simulation.

Read the Full Story.

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Video: Evolution of a Spiral Galaxy

Rich Brueckner — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:58:42 +0000

Our Video Sunday feature continues with this beautiful simulation of 100 Million stars in motion. The simulation was done by scientists Elena D’Onghia, Mark Vogelsberger, and Thiago Ize using the Harvard FAS Supercomputer Odyssey and facilities at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah.

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GPUs Help Californians Prepare for Earthquakes

Ralph — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:11:50 +0000

Over at the Nvidia Blog, Roy Kim writes that SDSC researchers are using NVIDIA Tesla K20X GPU accelerators to help improve earthquake forecasts, enabling engineers to design safer buildings and save lives. The power of GPUs enabled SDSC to run high-frequency, compute-intensive wave propagation simulations to better understand how a broad range of structures will respond in a major quake.

To meet the needs of the CyberShake 3.0 project, Cui realized they would need 750 million CPU hours on a traditional CPU-based supercomputer, costing over $800,000 just in power cost to support his simulations. That’s when they turned to GPUs for help. AWP-ODC, the research team’s primary seismic application, is more than 5x faster when run with GPUs, allowing researchers to discover insights they would not have been able to before. At the same time, they would save over $600,000 in power costs for their simulations. Less than a month ago, Cui’s team achieved over one petaflop of performance running on over 8,000 GPUs on the Titan supercomputer, shattering their previous record of 220 teraflops of sustained performance on Oak Ridge’s Jaguar supercomputer.

This video from Amit Chourasia at SDSC depicts a magnitude-8 earthquake in the northern San Andreas Fault.

Read the Full Story.

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Video: TACC’s Dr. Kelly Gaither Testifies at House Subcommittee on Research

Rich Brueckner — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:00:49 +0000

There is no doubt that the Sequester is putting extreme pressure on critical R&D in this country. As members of the HPC community, how can we help to ensure that we continue to fund important supercomputing research?

In this video from February 15, 2013, the House Subcommittee on Research holds a hearing on Applications for Information Technology Research & Development.

Witnesses:

Dr. Kelly Gaither, Director, Visualization Lab, Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Texas, Austin
Dr. Kathryn McKinley, Principal Researcher, Microsoft
Dr. Ed Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington

The topic of this afternoon’s hearing, Applications for Information Research & Development, is important to our national security, global competitiveness and technological innovation. This hearing will provide us with examples of practical applications and the benefits of Federal investment in networking and information technology R&D. The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, or NITRD, was originally authorized in 1991 in the High Performance and Computing Act. It coordinates the networking and information R&D efforts of 15 Federal member agencies, including DHS, NASA, NIH, EPA and the Department of Energy. The program is the main R&D investment portfolio of member agencies in networking, computing, software, cyber security and related information technologies totaling over $3.7 billion in FY2013.

On behalf of insideHPC, I just want to say, “Great job, Kelly!” Read the Full Story.

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Video: Supercomputer Modelling of a Complete Human Viral Pathogen

Rich Brueckner — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:00:14 +0000

In this video, researchers perform a reconstruction and simulation of the poliovirus using the BlueGene/Q supercomputer at the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative. The poliovirus model is being used as a basis for understanding antiviral drugs, virus infection and helps us to learn how to model related viruses such as Enterovirus 71.

Read the Full Story.

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Adaptive Computing Taking Scientific Visualization to New Heights

Staff — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:58:02 +0000

In this special guest feature from Scientific Computing World, Chad Harrington, VP of marketing at Adaptive Computing, reflects on visualization workloads.

It doesn’t take a pair of rose-coloured aviator glasses to visualise this scenario: imagine you’re an aerodynamics engineer and you’re scanning a 3D simulation of your latest concept plane. You pan, zoom and otherwise manipulate the simulation that visualises airflow around the wings and fuselage. The simulation is massively pixilated and highly compute-intensive, and yet you’re viewing and manipulating it on a three-year-old laptop. What’s more, several of your colleagues are on a conference call with you, and they’re manipulating those same pixels in the same session from multiple locations using typical office PCs and even tablets.

The fact is that this scenario is a reality in leading-edge visualization environments today. That’s because an integrated solution consisting of HPC workload management software and visualization software is doing for 3D simulation workloads what Software as a Service did for 2D applications: keeping applications and data together on the server side where they can be accessed simultaneously by multiple PCs, thin clients and mobile devices on the same session. And compute resources can be used more efficiently than ever before.

For IT managers, visualization workload optimization couldn’t arrive sooner. That’s because today it’s not unusual for 3D simulations to top out at 50 gigabytes or more. Worse still, they’re getting bigger every year and workload management issues are following suit. Workstations are becoming obsolete faster than ever before – usually in less than three years – and, of course, licensing, troubleshooting, patching and updating requirements at widely dispersed offices and desks are costly, time-consuming hassles. Network congestion and latency are serious issues, too, as is leakage of proprietary data.

Upfront workstation costs also continue to be a key concern. Deskside workstations feature high-end CPUs, top-of-the-line GPUs, and lots of memory. And they are single-purpose machines. Once a simulation is up and running, the system’s usefulness is tapped out. Adding insult to injury, workstations must be sized for the largest potential simulation job. So, even if small- or mid-sized technical visualization sessions are the norm, the workstation must be overbuilt to handle the worst-case scenario. Given today’s widely dispersed and mobile workforce – and the need for elasticity when it comes to compute and network resources – the immovable and otherwise rigid deskside workstation is an idea that’s gone the way of the zeppelin.

Instead of having expensive hot, loud, underutiliszed workstations taking up space under desks, it makes sense to have 3D CAD/CAE and other scientific visualization applications and data housed on shared virtualization clusters. Users get the full power of a high-end, GPU-enabled machine – as if it’s under their desks – while GPUs and other high-performance compute resources are shared by multiple sessions.

In addition, compute capabilities can be ‘right-sized’ on the fly, and utilization can be maximised. Rather than clogging networks by transferring source data for full workloads, this approach minimises bandwidth use. Likewise, support, updating and replacement of hardware and software are more efficient, less costly processes that do not affect users nearly as much as when those processes are completed at individuals’ desks. And by keeping data sets closer to the centralised resources, you can minimise security risks by ensuring tighter access control and data security.

Perhaps the most important benefit, however, is the ability to share these visualizations anywhere, using virtually any computing device. Users are able to securely work where it makes the most sense – in conference rooms, at home after work or wherever they are authorised to do so. As a result, workforce collaboration and productivity can improve dramatically.

Adaptive Computing, the largest provider of private cloud management and high-performance computing (HPC), has recently added two versions of its Moab HPC Suite that make these capabilities possible. Moab HPC Suite Application Portal Edition and Remote Visualization Edition are designed to maximise backend processing efficiencies and leverage next-generation access models. By simplifying the collection and interpretation of data, these solutions can help reduce the time it takes to achieve meaningful results.

Many companies have major investments in HPC in the data centre, and, generally, those resources aren’t used at anywhere near capacity. The same can be said for visualization workstations that are dispersed throughout many companies. But the good news is that those resources can now be brought together in a private technical compute cloud that handles both HPC and visualization. In many cases, GPUs can be shared between computational and visualization workloads – dedicated to visualization workloads during the day and HPC computational requirements through the night. HPC workload management software policies can be put in place to automatically determine which sessions and jobs go where. Those policies can also be set up to establish reservations for higher-priority workloads at specified times of the day or night.

This story appears here as part of a cross-publishing agreement with Scientific Computing World.

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Using GPUs to Improve Rotorcraft Safety

Ralph — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:40:36 +0000

This week the CUDA Developer Zone features an interview with Monica Syal, an Aerospace Engineer at Advanced Rotorcraft Technology (ART). Syal is working on the development of a real-time rotorcraft brownout simulation facility for flight simulator applications. Brownout dust clouds develop because of rotor downwash flow, which impinges upon the ground and uplifts dust particles. The underlying physics is basically a dual-phase fluids problem, one fluid phase being the air and the other being the dust.

The simulation of the individual particle motions in the dust clouds is equivalent to an N-body problem, where the number of bodies (or particles) is very large, in this case of the order of 10¹⁴. We are using several techniques to expedite such simulations, some of these being smart algorithms (e.g., fast multipole methods), particle clustering algorithms, and high-performance parallel computing techniques. An obvious way to achieve the needed computational accelerations by using parallel computing is to conduct the simulations using as many computing resources as possible. The number of cores used in a CPU is relatively few and the CPUs are optimized for serial processing. On the other hand, a GPU consists of hundreds of cores, which can be used to parallelize the computationally intensive parts of the simulations. Therefore, we decided to use high-end Tesla GPUs to conduct these simulations. This has provided us with about two orders of magnitude speedup in the computational time compared to the serial execution of the code.

This research will help enhance flight safety and reduce the large number of brownout related accidents that occur in both military and civil rotorcraft flight operations. Read the Full Story.

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MSC Software’s SimManager Brings 3D CAE Visualization with VCollab

Ralph — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:43:47 +0000

MSC Software Corporation has announced a new marketing partnership with Visual Collaboration Technologies to promote and distribute the VCollab family of products. Visual Collaboration Technologies provides a state of the art platform for viewing 3D geometry, FEA models and FEA Results in a rich lightweight format that is web friendly. VCollab will be offered immediately as a standalone product and will be deeply integrated into MSC Software’s SimManager, providing a means to share, collaborate and review 3D simulation data.

VCollab provides a light weight 3D way to visualize and share design and CAE information in SimManager allowing engineers to collaborate and make critical engineering decisions right from their browser,” explains Leo Kilfoy, General Manager of Simulation Process and Data Management Business Unit at MSC.

Read the Full Story.

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Video: Supersonic Jet Engine Simulation on 1 Million Compute Cores

Rich Brueckner — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 12:00:19 +0000

In this video, researchers at the Center for Turbulence Research set a new record in supercomputing, harnessing a million computing cores to model supersonic jet noise. As reported here earlier this week, the work was performed on the Sequoia IBM Bluegene/Q system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

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Dartmouth Opens Visualization Lab

Staff — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:12:02 +0000

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth has announced the creation of the Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research, to promote the development of innovative and powerful computational tools to address scientific and societal challenges.

The dramatic increase in the speed and data-handling capability of high-performance computers, and complementary development of novel algorithms, have transformed the nature of scientific investigation.

The new centre will place UMass Dartmouth at the forefront of computationally-based research and education by providing intellectual, academic and technical leadership in the multi-disciplinary pursuit of discovery and innovation enabled by advanced computational methods and data visualisation,” added Robert Peck, Dean of the College of Engineering.

The Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research unites more than a dozen faculty researchers in mathematics, astrophysics, mechanical and civil engineering. It will promote the mission of the university by providing undergraduate and graduate students with high quality discovery-based educational experiences that transcend the traditional boundaries of academic field or department, and foster collaborative research in the computational sciences within the university.

This story appears here as part of a cross-publishing agreement with Scientific Computing World.

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Video: Oculus Rift Device Delivers on the Promise of Virtual Reality

Rich Brueckner — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:00:57 +0000

Over at New Scientist, Niall Firth writes that the new Oculus Rift gaming headset maybe the device that finally brings convincing Virtual Reality to the home.

In the demo at CES, I walk around the medieval scene using Xbox controllers, able to look all around me just by turning my head. The only downside is a slight feeling of sea-sickness if you move too quickly, something I experience as I try to turn on my heels and move quickly off in a different direction. But the exhilarating feeling it provides is undeniable. Virtual reality might be on its way back, after all.

The Oculus Rift began as a Kickstarter project that has garnered nearly $2.5 Million dollars in pledges. Read the Full Story.

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Video: Using Supercomputing to Speed Recycling of Plastic

Rich Brueckner — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:00:18 +0000

This video describes supercomputing research by the Barcelona Supercomputer Center and the Delft University of Technology to help design a plastic sorting plant. The optimized design will be able to separate polyethylene and polypropylene, the two main types of plastic, according to their respective densities. Each year, every European throws away an average of 30 kilograms of plastic.

Read the Full Story.

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Video: Supercomputing the Climate

Ralph — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 17:26:39 +0000

In this video, NASA researchers describe how supercomputing enables high-resolution climate and weather models. These models can then be continually refined by running them against current and historical weather data.

The Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) was undertaken by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office with two primary objectives: to place observations from NASA’s Earth Observing System satellites into a climate context and to improve upon the hydrologic cycle represented in earlier generations of reanalyses.

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CFD Gives Athletes a Competitive Edge

Rich Brueckner — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 17:23:40 +0000

Over at Wired, Madhumita Venkataramanan writes that mechanical engineers at Sheffield Hallam University are using full CFD modeling to help triathletes be more competitive.

To build this visualisation, known as a computational fluid-dynamics model, Ranchordas’s body shape and geometry was captured with a robotic scanner. Next, his contours were put into a virtual wind-tunnel, where scientists played around with values such as wind velocity and direction. The model can then predict how air flows around his body.

Read the Full Story.

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Job of the Week: Visualization Specialist at the University of Houston

Rich Brueckner — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 14:39:52 +0000

The University of Houston is seeking a Visualization Specialist in our Job of the Week.

TLC2 operates a scientific visualization theater facility that includes a large (better than 4000×2000) video display driven by a compute resource with multiple graphics cards. There are also motion tracking sensors to allow interaction with the display. The Technical Manager will work with other members of the TLC2 team to manage and operate the visualization facilities, including responsibility for the maintenance of the projector/display and its associated compute resources, installation and administration of existing and new software and hardware, and providing technical support to users of the facility.

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As a reminder, we are offering FREE job listings for .EDU and .GOV domains, so email us at info @ insideHPC.com for a special discount code.

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Visualization Software from TACC Empowers Humanities Researchers

Ralph — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:30:02 +0000

TACC has released Most Pixels Ever: Cluster Edition, an open source software tool that allows researchers, especially those in the humanities, to create interactive, multimedia visualizations on high resolution, tiled displays.

The goal is to make visualization tools easier for humanities researchers to use,” said Rob Turknett, digital media, arts and humanities coordinator at TACC. “The proliferation of digitized textual, visual and aural resources is a great boon for the humanities, offering opportunities for new kinds of scholarship, but it also brings a new complexity.”

Supported by a startup grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities titled “A Thousand Words: Advanced Visualization for the Humanities,” the software is based on a language called Processing, a programming toolkit that makes it easier for people to create visualizations. The software is already in use at the University of Texas at El Paso and the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Center for Simulation Visualization and Real-time Prediction. Read the Full Story.

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