11.07.2008
Calit2 also releases new version of CGLX Cluster Visualization Framework
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As the size of complex scientific data sets grows exponentially, so does the need for scientists to explore the data visually and collaboratively in ultra-high resolution environments.

To that end, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) has unveiled the highest-resolution display system for scientific visualization in the world at the University of California, San Diego.

The Highly Interactive Parallelized Display Space (HIPerSpace) features nearly 287 million pixels of screen resolution - more than one active pixel for every U.S. citizen, based on the 2000 Census.

The HIPerSpace is more than 10 percent bigger (in terms of pixels) than the second-largest display in the world, constructed recently at the NASA Ames Research Center. That 256-million-pixel system, known as the hyperwall-2, was developed by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames , with support from Colfax International.

The expanded display at Calit2 is 30 percent bigger than the first HIPerSpace wall at UCSD, built in 2006. That system was moved to a larger location in Atkinson Hall, the Calit2 building at UCSD, where it was expanded by 66 million pixels to take advantage of the new space. The system was used officially for the first time on June 16 to demonstrate applications for a delegation from the National Geographic Society.

"Amazingly it took our team less than a day to tear down the original wall, relocate and expand it," said Falko Kuester, principal investigator of the HIPerSpace system. "The higher resolution display takes us more than half-way to our ultimate goal of building a half-billion-pixel tiled display system to give researchers an unprecedented ability to look broadly at large data sets while also zooming in to the tiniest details."

Kuester is the Calit2 Professor of Visualization and Virtual Reality, and associate professor in the Jacobs School of Engineering's departments of Structural Engineering as well as Computer Science and Engineering. He also leads the Graphics, Visualization and Virtual Reality Lab (GRAVITY), which is developing the HIPerSpace technology.

Calit2's expanded HIPerSpace is an ultra-scale visualization environment developed on a multi-tile paradigm. The system features 70 high-resolution Dell 30" displays, arranged in fourteen columns of five displays each. Each 'tile' has a resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels - bringing the combined, visible resolution to 35,640 by 8,000 pixels, or more than 286.7 million pixels in all. "By using larger, high-resolution tiles, we also have minimized the amount of space taken up by the frames, or bezels, of each display," said Kuester. "Bezels will eventually disappear, but until then, we can reduce their distraction by keeping the highest possible ratio of screen area to each tile's bezel." Including the pixels hidden behind the bevels of each display, which give the "French door" appearance, the effective total image size is 348 million pixels.

At 31.8 feet wide and 7.5 feet tall (9.7m x 2.3m), the HIPerSpace is already being used by a wide range of research groups at UC San Diego, which want to be able to view their largest data sets while also drilling down to the smallest elements on the same screen. A team from the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) went to Florence to laser-scan the main hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the center's researchers at Calit2 can now manipulate the computer model, depicting all 2.5 billion data points and explore the space in real time. Other scientists model the impact of seismic activity on structures, climate-change predictions, the structure of the human brain, to name a few such applications.

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