Parallel Graphics Comes to Desktops of High End Visualization Users

By DE Editors

CEI(Apex, NC) is expected to introduce EnSight DR, the first commercialvisualization application that brings the power of parallel graphics tothe user's desktop, next week at SC 05 in Seattle.

"Up until now, only expensive supercomputers have been able toefficiently render extremely large data sets," says Dale Southard, avisualization hardware architect at Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory. Lawrence Livermore, Sandia and Los Alamos NationalLaboratories helped CEI develop its DR methodology in support of theDepartment of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration'sAdvanced Simulation and Computing Program.

CEI's EnSight DR uses distributed rendering (DR) technology thatautomatically distributes polygon data into pieces for balancedrendering on multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) running onnetworked PCs. Once images are rendered, EnSight DR composites thepieces into a single image.

EnSight DR expands on CEI's SoS (server of servers) capability inEnSight Gold software, used by leading automotive, aerospace andresearch labs worldwide to visualize some of the world's largestsimulation problems. The new software provides a parallel, distributedrendering client that enables users to fully exploit the distributedmemory capacity of networked PCs containing high-performance graphicscards. This gives users the ability to visualize the largest datasetson their desktops at interactive rates. EnSight DR also providesdistributed, cluster-based rendering for planar multi-tile displays.

EnSight DR includes new features for dataset decomposition and dynamicscene distribution to cluster nodes. These features, coupled with ascalable, high-performance image compositing engine andparallel-rendering control, enable EnSight DR to handle datasets anddisplay sizes well beyond other commercial and even researchapplications. EnSight DR also supports Chromium-based parallelrendering, providing additional flexibility in cluster-computingenvironments.

To learn more about EnSight DR's ability to maintain scalability over a high number of clustered GPUs, visit ensight.com.