geowalls and beyond…

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

GeoWallsand beyond…

Jason Leigh, Luc Renambot, Andrew Johnson,

Nicholas Schwarz, Arun Rao

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

Disks, Networks, and Displays are getting cheaper

• Think about the kinds of research problems you can solve if you lived in a world with:

1. On demand access of large data sets from massive data servers (like USGS EDC)

2. Rapid access of large data sets over emerging national and international high speed networks (like StarLight, National Lambda Rail)

3. Visualization of large, layered and time-series data sets on infinite resolution displays (like GeoWall 2s, etc..)

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

• A virtual computer built from clusters of computers that serve as giant storage/compute/visualization peripherals attached to a backplane that consists of ultra high speed deterministic networks.

• Goals:– Develop an end-to-end solution: understand how to develop such a system

(from hardware to middleware to applications) eliminating all the bottlenecks.– Explore how this new architecture can effect dramatic change in the way we

solve computational science problems in a number of e-Science initiatives: NSF EarthScope, NIH Biomedical Informatics Research Network, NSF ORION Ocean Observatories

– Partners: CALIT2, UCSD, Scripps, USGS EDC, NCMIR

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

StarLight

2.5Gb and 10Gb Links

TeraGrid

IEEAF/

Tyco

APAN

CA*net4

CA*net4

IEEAF/Tyco

UK-Light

NetherLight

DataTAG

NORDUnet

CESnet

2.5Gb and 10Gb Links (Anticipated)

Other

Co-location space for multi-terabyte disk servers and tens of gigabits of network bandwidth, connected to all federal networks and international high speed optical networks.www.startap.net

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

National Lambda Rail

www.nationallambdarail.org

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

GeoWall 2

• 10 PCs – 8 to drive the 5x3 array of 20” LCDs. 1 PC to act as a console. 1 PC as a backup.

• Each PC has GeForce FX5600.• 18 LCDs – 15 to use. 3 as spares.• 16 DVI fiber optic extension cables – 30ft: ~$400 per cable.• 1 Gigabit network switch - ~$4500• KVM Switch - $2400• Total cost ~ : $67900• Using 19” LCDs and older GeForce Ti graphics should

bring this price down to: $48180• GeoWall2’s are Scalable. You buy as many PCs and tiles to

create the resolution you want.

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

Scripps OptIPuter2 IBM T221 displays (18M pixels – 7680x2400)

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

Dual-output for stereo visualization(GeoWall) LCD array for high-resolution display

(7.7 Mpixels)

Single small form-factor PC

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

Personal GeoWall 2

• Personal GeoWall 2 = GeoWall + “Array of LCD panels”– Single 32 bit PC ~ $2000 (2G RAM)– Quadro4 980XL ~ $500 (for stereo) – Quadro4 NVS 400 ~ $400 (for tiled graphics)– Mount ~ $500– 2560x2048 ~ $3200 ($800 each 19” LCD– Or 3200x2400 ~ $5700 ($1300 each 20” LCD)

• In the near future: Athlon64 or Opteron, Quadro FX 4000 and Quadro FX 600 PCI

• Next year: PCI Express graphics cards may allow us to support mult-headed graphics better

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

The Varrier: Autostereoscopic Display (7x5 tiles)

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

LambdaVision

• 11x5 LCD tiled display (17600x6000) (~17 ft wide)

• 100 million pixels

• 30 node dual processor Opteron– 2G RAM, 2 TB disk per node– Dual gigabit networking

• All future GeoWall 2s will use 64-bit processors- there is no reason to go back

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

Conclusion

• Think about how the GeoWall Community should evolve?

• Think about the kinds of research problems you can solve if you lived in a world with:

1. On demand access of large data sets from massive data servers (like USGS EDC)

2. Rapid access of large data sets over emerging national and international high speed networks (like StarLight, National Lambda Rail)

3. Visualization of large, layered and time-series data sets on infinite resolution displays (like GeoWall 2s, etc..)

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

On a lighter note:Game Programming on the GeoWall with DarkBASIC

www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/agave/DB_STEREO_DEPLOY