Visualization Resources

To support the world-class research being performed on our high performance computing systems, TACC provides advanced visualization resources and consulting services, which are accessible both in-person and remotely. These resources encompass both hardware and software, and include: Stallion, the highest resolution tiled display in the world; Longhorn, the largest hardware accelerated, remote, interactivevisualization cluster; and the Longhorn Visualization Portal, an internet gateway to the Longhorn cluster and an easy-to-use interface for scientific visualization.

Training and Accessibility

Getting an Account on Visualization Resources:

• Please visit User Services for general information on getting a TACC or XSEDE account.
• You are PI eligible if you are a faculty member or someone who is in a position to be responsible for users in their group, such as a Facilities Manager or Lab Manager. If you are a student, it is preferable that you find someone to be your PI in your department, and get them to request an allocation on the visualization resource. They will need to obtain a TACC portal account as well if they do not already have one.
• Have your PI request that you be added to their current allocation on the visualization resource you would like. If you are a PI, request an allocation on resource via the "Allocations" tab.
• To get an account on the Vislab machines, you will need to request an allocation on the Stallion System.

Requesting A Tour of the Vislab:

Please contact our Community Outreach Coordinator, Rosalia Arellano, about getting a tour of the visualization laboratory: arellano@tacc.utexas.edu

Training Classes:

To facilitate the use of our visualization resources, TACC staff provide training on the various technologies, programming languages and software packages that will enable researchers to get the best results from their efforts. Please see our training calendar for more information. If you would like to be trained on the use of the systems in the ACES Vislab, please contact info@tacc.utexas.edu, or submit a ticket via the TACC Portal.

User Guides:

• ACES Visualization Lab User Guide
• Longhorn User Guide
• Spur User Guide

ACES Visualization Laboratory

The ACES Visualization Laboratory ("Vislab"), located in ACES 2.404a, has been completely transformed, and is now open to all UT faculty, students, and staff, as well as UT System and XSEDE users. The lab includes updated systems and top-of-the-line equipment, such as Stallion, a Dell visualization cluster with 24 nodes and a 15x5 307 megapixel 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.

307 Mpixel Tiled-Display System (Stallion)

The Stallion Tiled-Display system is the world's highest resolution tiled-display. The cluster provides users with the ability to perform visualizations on a large 15x5 tiled display of Dell 30-inch flat panel monitors, for 307 megapixel 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 access to over 36GB of graphics memory, 108GB of system memory, 19TB aggregate local disk storage, and 100 processing cores. This configuration enables the processing of datasets of a massive scale, and the interactive visualization of substantial geometries. A large, shared file system is available to enable the storage of terascale size datasets.

• 2 Intel Xeon 5355 quad-core processors (8 cores total)
• 16GB of RAM
• nVidia 8800 GTX (G80) Graphics Card, 768MB memory
• 1.5TB local disk

23 Dell XPS Compute Nodes, each with

• Quad Core Q6600 Intel 2.4GHz CPU
• 500GB local disk
• 4GB Ram
• Dual nVidia 8800 GTX (G80) Graphics Cards, each with 768MB memory

75 Dell 3007WFP Widescreen LCD Monitors

• Maximum Resolution 2560x1600 per monitor (4.096 Mpixels)

Network Filesystem

• Dell PowerVault NFS500
• 6TB Disk Space (6x1TB disks)

Network Interface

• InfiniBand 4x & 1Gb Ethernet
• Native InfiniBand throughput 10Gb/s

Multi-touch Display (Lasso)

Lasso is a multi-touch display in TACC's ACES Visualization Laboratory. At a resolution of 12.4 megapixels (5760x2160), the tiled display consists of (6) 46" monitors in a 3x2 grid configuration and is driven by a single node using AMD Eyefinity technology. The display's most prominent feature is the ability for human-computer interaction, utilizing a PQ Labs 32-point multi-touch infrared perimeter and a Microsoft Kinect.

Sony 9M Pixel Projection System (Bronco)

The flat screen area gives users a 20 ft. x 11 ft., 4096 x 2160 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 ultra-high-resolution visualizations and presentations. Bronco configuration details follow.

Dell Precision Workstation

• 2 Intel Xeon 5355 quad-core processors (8 cores total)
• 16GB of RAM
• 1.5TB local disk
• nVidia Quadro FX4600 (G80 core) and 768MB memory
• nVidia Quadro Plex 2200 D2 (4 DVI out)

Sony SRX-S105 Projector

• 4k x 2k = 4096x2160 or 4 1080P quadrants
• Total: 8.847 Mpixels
• Screen size 20'x11'
• Single continuous display

3D Capable 82" DLP Display (Mustang)

Stereo capability is provided in the lab by an 82" DLP back-projection display using an active stereo system provided by nVidia that provides clear 3D images. The system can be used to view models in 3D, visualize data in stereo, and watch pre-recorded 3D content. Mustang configuration details follow.

• 2 Intel Xeon 5355 quad-core processors (8 cores total)
• 16GB of RAM
• 1.5TB local disk
• nVidia Quadro FX4600 Graphics Card, 1.5GB memory
• nVidia 3D Vision Active Stereo System

Collaboration Room (Saddle)

The collaboration room offers the opportunity for small groups to work together on developing and exploring visualizations. The display is provided by a high resolution projector with the many possible input combinations. The room also includes a 5.1 theater stereo system with Blu-Ray capability. Users may develop their visualizations in the room, 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. The projector can be driven by user's laptops or the room's Mac Mini.

Vislab Workstations (Horseshoes)

Four high-end workstations are available in the lab for use in graphics production, visualization, and video editing. Linux, Mac, and Windows operating systems are available on the workstations. Horseshoe configurations follow.

Windows 7 Workstation (Horseshoe1):

• 2 Intel Xeon 5355 quad-core processors (8 cores total)
• 16GB of RAM
• 1.5TB local disk
• nVidia 8800GTX Graphics Card
• Dual 30" LCD Monitors (2560X1600)

Mac Pro Workstation (Horseshoe2):

• 2 Intel Xeon 2.26 GHz quad-core processors (8 cores total)
• 16 GB of RAM
• 1 TB local disk
• ATI Radeon 4870 graphics card
• 30" LCD Monitor (2560X1600)

Two Kubuntu Linux Workstations (Horseshoe 3, 4) each with:

• 2 Intel Xeon 5355 quad-core processors (8 cores total)
• 16GB of RAM
• 1.5TB local disk
• nVidia 8800GTX Graphics Card
• 30" LCD Monitors (2560X1600)

ROC Visualization Laboratory

The ROC Visualization Laboratory (ROC 1.524) is located at the Research Office Complex building of the Pickle Research Campus. The lab contains a tiled-display system and a large high-resolution TV. This display provides the ability for user's at the Pickle Research Campus to visualize large scale data locally. In addition, the lab contains a 70" Sony SXRD Rear Projection 1080P display.

37 Mpixel Tiled-Display (Colt)

The main visualization resource in the ROC Vislab is Colt, a 37 Mpixel tiled-display and cluster. Colt can be used to visualize high resolution images and data. Colt configuration details follow.

9 Dell 3007WFP Widescreen LCD Monitors

• Max Res 2560x1600 per monitor (4.096 Mpixels)

6 Rack-mount Dell R5400 Precision Workstations, each with:

• 2 Intel Xeon Quad Core E5440 Processors (8 cores total)
• 16GB of RAM
• 1TB local disk
• nVidia Quadro FX5800 Graphics Card, 4GB of memory

Network Filesystem

• Dell PowerVault NFS500
• 5TB Disk Space (5x1TB disks)

Remote Visualization Resources

In addition to TACC's local visualization resources, TACC also provides two resources that are used for the remote rendering of data. Both of these systems are equipped with GPUs and can be used as both GPGPU and remote, interactive visualization resources.

256-Node Dell Visualization Cluster (Longhorn)

Longhorn is a large visualization cluster designed for remote interactive visualization and data analysis. In addition, Longhorn supports production, compute-intensive calculations on both the CPUs and GPUs via off-hour queues. The large, per-node memory is intended to support serial and parallel visualization and analysis applications that take advantage of large memories, multiple computing cores, and multiple graphics processors. Longhorn is an ideal companion resource for working with large data sets created on Ranger, since Longhorn can directly access Ranger's Lustre parallel file system.

The system consists of 256 dual-socket nodes, each with significant computing and graphics capability. Total system resources include 2048 compute cores (Nehalem quad-core), 512 GPUs (128 NVIDIA Quadro Plex S4s, each containing 4 NVIDIA FX 5800s), 13.5 TB of distributed memory and a 210 TB local Lustre file system. Longhorn configuration details can be found below.

128 NVIDIA Quadro Plex S4s, each with

• 4 NVIDIA FX 5800 GPUs
• 16GB Graphics Memory (4GB per GPU)
• 2 independent graphics busses, one per GPU pair

240 Dell R610 Compute Nodes, each with

• 2 Intel Nehalem quad-core processors (8 cores) @ 2.53 GHz
• 48GB RAM
• 73GB local disk
• connected to 2 dedicated NVIDIA FX 5800 GPUs via Quadro Plex graphics bus

16 Dell R710 Compute Nodes, each with

• 2 Intel Nehalem quad-core processors (8 cores) @ 2.53 GHz
• 144GB RAM
• 73GB local disk
• connected to 2 dedicated NVIDIA FX 5800 GPUs via Quadro Plex graphics bus
• Mellanox QDR InfiniBand Interconnect
• 14 Dell PowerVault MD1000 Direct Attached Storage Arrays (210TB global file system, managed by the Lustre Parallel File System)

8-Node Sun Visualization Cluster (Spur)

Spur, TACC's Terascale Sun Visualization Cluster, contains 128 compute cores, 1 TB aggregate memory and 32 GPUs. Spur shares the InfiniBand interconnect and Lustre Parallel file system of Ranger, TACC's Sun Constellation Linux Cluster. Thus, Spur acts not only as a powerful stand-alone visualization system: it also enables researchers to perform visualization tasks on Ranger-produced data without migrating to another file system and to integrate simulation and rendering tasks on a single network fabric.

Longhorn Visualization Portal

The Longhorn Visualization Portal (http://portal.longhorn.tacc.utexas.edu) provides a simplified interface to the Longhorn visualization resource. The visualization portal allows you to start parallel jobs on Longhorn and perform interactive visualization through a web browser. In addition, the portal contains a built in visualization engine, EnVision, that makes scientific visualization efficient and simple. The portal can be accessed by any user with a TACC or XSEDE account, given the user has an allocation on a TACC system.