Visualization Laboratory

Visualization Resources

The ACES Visualization Laboratory ("Vislab"), located in ACES 2.404a, is currently under construction. The Vislab is expected to be completed and open to all UT faculty, students and staff by mid-September 2008. The lab will include updated systems and top-of-the-line equipment, such as Stallion, a Dell visualization cluster with 24 nodes and a 9x5 190M pixel tiled display, and a Sony SRX-S105 9M pixel flat projection system driven by a high-end Dell workstation.. A layout of the Vislab, along with brief descriptions of each of the different sections and equipment is given below.

New Visualuzation Laboratory Floor Plan

Overview of New Vis Lab areas:

A. Dell Visualization Cluster and 190M Pixel Tiled Display (Stallion)

The Stallion cluster provides users with the ability to perform visualizations on a large 9x5 tiled display of Dell 30-inch flat panel monitors, for 190M pixel resolution. This configuration allows for an exploration of visualizations at an extremely high level of detail and quality compared to a typical moderate pixel count projector. The cluster allows users to access to over 36GB of graphics memory, 108GB of system memory, and 100 processing cores. This setup enables the processing of datasets of a massive scale, and the interactive visualization of substantial geometries. A large, shared file system is included in order to allow for the storage of terascale sized datasets. In addition, remote users will be able to utilize the rendering nodes to visualize large datasets.

B. Sony SRX-S105 (9M Pixel) Projection System

The flat screen area gives users a 20 ft. x 11 ft., 4000 x 2000 resolution display, which is driven by a Sony SRX-S105 overhead projector and a high-end Dell workstation. This configuration provides users with the added flexibility to run a wide variety of applications, as only one workstation is required to drive the display. The projector gives exceptional brightness and a high resolution, 9M pixel viewing area. In addition, it is configurable to accept inputs from up to four simultaneous video sources, allowing for a hybrid display of multiple systems. As a result, the setting is ideal for both visualizations and presentations.

C. Collaboration Station

The collaboration room offers the opportunity for small groups to work together on developing and exploring visualizations. The display is provided by a single high resolution projector which is driven by a high-end Dell workstation. Users may develop their visualizations on the workstation, and then easily transition them to one of the two larger display systems in the main lab area at a later time. This is an excellent environment for developmental work and collaboration with the TACC visualization staff when large audiences are not present.

D. Dell Workstations

The workstation area consists for four high-end workstations, complete with large LCD displays. Each workstation provides a single user with the tools for visualization development. Users may develop their visualizations here, and then transfer to one of the two larger display systems. These workstations are currently in production in the Vislab.

Allocations:

For more information on requesting allocations for the Vislab equipment and other TACC visualization hardware, see http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/resources/allocations

Visualization Hardware

Maverick, our terascale remote visualization system, consists of a Sun E25K with 128 processors, 512 Gigabytes of shared memory, and with access to over a Terabyte of storage. The cpu deployed in the system is Sun SPARC IV processor technology, with a clock speed of 1.05 GHz, and capable of issuing 2 floating point operations per clock tick. A unique feature of the system is the modular graphics subsystem, based on programmable, commodity graphics cards. Maverick User Guide

Sun E25K

Software

TACC supports and maintains a variety of software packages on our visualization systems. To see what software is available on a particular machine please see the Software and Tools page. A list of tutorials and documentation for most of these software packages can be found on the Visualization Packages page.