Distributed visualization

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1991

OSTI ID:10130156

Arnold, T R

Within the last half decade or so, two technological evolutions have culminated in mature products of potentially great utility to computer simulation. One is the emergence of low-cost workstations with versatile graphics and substantial local CPU power. The other is the adoption of UNIX as a de facto ``standard`` operating system on at least some machines offered by virtually all vendors. It is now possible to perform transient simulations in which the number- crunching capability of a supercomputer is harnessed to allow both process control and graphical visualization on a workstation. Such a distributed computer system is described as it now exists: a large FORTRAN application on a CRAY communicates with the balance of the simulation on a SUN-3 or SUN-4 via remote procedure call (RPC) protocol. The hooks to the application and the graphics have been made very flexible. Piping of output from the CRAY to the SUN is nonselective, allowing the user to summon data and draw or plot at will. The ensemble of control, application, data handling, and graphics modules is loosely coupled, which further generalizes the utility of the software design.

• Research Organization: Westinghouse Savannah River Co., Aiken, SC (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC09-89SR18035
• OSTI ID: 10130156
• Report Number(s): WSRC-MS--91-305; CONF-9109276--9; ON: DE92009405
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200
COMMUNICATIONS
COMPUTER GRAPHICS
COMPUTER NETWORKS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING
MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTERS
PARALLEL PROCESSING
PROCESS CONTROL
SYNCHRONIZATION