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Cactus and Visapult: An ultra-high performance grid-distributedvisualization architecture using connectionless protocols

Journal Article · · IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
OSTI ID:917800
This past decade has seen rapid growth in the size,resolution, and complexity of Grand Challenge simulation codes. Thistrend is accompanied by a trend towards multinational, multidisciplinaryteams who carry out this research in distributed teams, and thecorresponding growth of Grid infrastructure to support these widelydistributed Virtual Organizations. As the number and diversity ofdistributed teams grow, the need for visualization tools to analyze anddisplay multi-terabyte, remote data becomes more pronounced and moreurgent. One such tool that has been successfully used to address thisproblem is Visapult. Visapult is a parallel visualization tool thatemploys Grid-distributed components, latency tolerant visualization andgraphics algorithms, along with high performance network I/O in order toachieve effective remote analysis of massive datasets. In this paper wediscuss improvements to network bandwidth utilization and responsivenessof the Visapult application that result from using connectionlessprotocols to move data payload between the distributed Visapultcomponents and a Grid-enabled, high performance physics simulation usedto study gravitational waveforms of colliding black holes: The Cactuscode. These improvements have boosted Visapult's network efficiency to88-96 percent of the maximum theoretical available bandwidth onmulti-gigabit Wide Area Networks, and greatly enhanced interactivity.Such improvements are critically important for future development ofeffective interactive Grid applications.
Research Organization:
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Director, Office of Science
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
917800
Report Number(s):
LBNL--51564; BnR: KJ0102000
Journal Information:
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Journal Name: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 23
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English