Summary

Next-Generation Visual Supercomputing using PC Clusters with Volume Graphics Hardware Devices

Authors:

Shigeru Muraki,The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan
Masato Ogata, Mitsubishi Precision Co., Ltd. (MPC)
Kwan-Liu Ma, University of California, Davis
Kenji Koshizuka, MPC
Kagenori Kajihara, MPC
Xuezhen Liu, MPC
Yasutada Nagano, MPC
Kazuro Shimokawa, AIST

Abstract

To seek a low-cost, extensible solution for the large-scale data visualization problem, a visual computing system is designed as a result of a collaboration between industry and government research laboratories in Japan, also with participation by researchers in U.S. This scalable system is a commodity PC cluster equipped with the VolumePro 500 volume graphics cards and a specially designed image compositing hardware. Our performance study shows such a system is capable of interactive rendering 512^3 and 1024^3 volume data and highly scalable. In particular, with such a system, simulation and visualization can be performed concurrently which allows scientists to monitor and tune their simulations on the fly. In this paper, both the system and hardware designs are presented.