Importance of Visualization in Supercomputer-Based Research
Once a computer simulation or analysis has been performed, the results must be interpreted by the researcher. While looking at the results in a numerical form can provide insights, the quantity of numbers produced by some high performance computer simulations can make this task impractical. One alternative is to convert the numbers into pictures and animations, because human beings are inherently far better at understanding information in these forms.
A researcher who, for example, is using finite difference methods on a supercomputer to model thermal convection in the Earth's mantel, can use computer graphics on a workstation to visualize the resulting temperatures consisting of millions, perhaps billions, of values. Using a program on the workstation, data for each time step is represented as a grid of pixels on the screen with the pixel colors representing temperature. These grids can then be displayed in succession to show the evolution of the model over time. In the case of a 3-dimensional model, more advanced techniques, such as volumetric rendering, can be used to visualize the data.
To assist our researchers, the technical support staff is available to provide specialized graphics and scientific visualization support for Institute researchers. For information or questions, please send email to help@msi.umn.edu or call 626-0802, Feel free to ask any questions, including questions about software, hardware, animations, writing graphics programs, distributed graphics processing, and discussing the application of the various software algorithms and hardware configurations to address your specific needs.
An extensive range of graphics software is available. It is the intent of this section to help users in choosing the visualization software best suited to their particular needs. In the following table, software is organized by category. Each category contains a description and then a link to a list of the applicable software packages available at the Institute. Researchers who wish to visualize a certain set of data can scan through this section until they find the visualization method which would best represent their data. By reading these detailed descriptions, researchers can narrow down which package(s) is most suitable based on their own criteria (e.g., whether of not the software has a FORTRAN or C language programming interface, what machines the software runs on, whether or not the software has a graphical user interface). It is suggested that you talk over your requirements with the technical support staff to discuss issues that you may not have anticipated to be important.
Notes:
| Category | Web Location | Description |
|---|---|---|
| All | all.html | All software at the Supercomputing Institute. |
| Visualization | Visualization.html | All Visualization Software at the Supercomputing Institute |
| Graphs | Graphs.html | Tools for plotting curves in 2 and 3D. |
| Contours | Contours.html | 2-D contours represent 2-D scalar fields by drawing curves representing constant function values, or by shading between courves of constant function values. |
| Isosurfaces | Isosurfaces.html | 3-D isosurfaces represent 3-D scalar fields by drawing surfaces representing constant function values |
| Vector Fields | VectorFields.html | Tools for visualizing 2-D or 3-D vector fields. Many package can also draw stream traces: Curves that represent the path of a particle in a vector field |
| Volume Rendering | VolumeRendering.html | Similar to an X-ray. Tries to display as much of the 3D data as possible, by varying the transparency of the constant function values. |
| Raster Images | RasterImages.html | A raster image is an array of bytes. Tools are usually needed to add color, extract contours, ... |
| Drawing | Drawing.html | Tools for creating images consisting of text and geometric objects such as points, lines, circles, ... |
| Image Annotation | ImageAnnotation.html | Tools for adding text and geometric objects to images. |
| Image Conversion | ImageConversion.html | Tools for converting an image from one format to another. |
| Image Display | ImageDisplay.html | Tools to display images. |
| Image Processing | ImageProcessing.html | Tools for manupulating images, including edge detection, the manipulation of color and brightness, resizing and cropping the image, converting to grayscale. |
| Animation | Animation.html | Tools for creating and viewing animations. |
| Graph Digitizing | GraphDigitizing.html | Tools for extracting data values from a graph that has been scanned in. |
| Fluid Dynamics | FluidDynamics.html | Tools for Computational Fluid Dynamics. |
| Geometry Viewer | GeometryViewer.html | Tools for displaying geometric objects |
| Molecular Modeling | MolecularModeling.html | Tools to visualizing and manupulate the geometrical structure of molecules. |
| Computer-Aided Engineering | Computer-AidedEngineering.html | Includes Pre- and Post-processors |