CVC Facilities

The ICES Visualization Laboratory provides an end-to-end infrastructure for data intensive and display intensive computing. The large multi- projected display areas provide unparalleled interactive and immersive visual exploration, supported by parallel data analysis and graphics rendering supercomputers where digital data stream manipulation, storage and switching occur with maximum bandwidth. Even analog RGBHV visual waveforms are digitized and coexist in digital video repositories, together with synthetic digital video (scientific visualization animations of time dependent phenomena). Reconfigurability of the interaction arena, and the ability to research with the cutting edge of rendering, switching and display technologies were the determining factors of our new visualization facility design.

The Laboratory is currently composed of four parts: the Front and Rear Projection Systems, the Console, the Workstation Perimeter, and the Edit Studio. Below the laboratory, and the first floor of the ACES Building, is the Computer Room. The major visualization engines are housed there: the SGI Onyx 2 System and the visualization Compaq Computer Cluster. These machines drive the projection systems in the laboratory.

The output for the Projection Systems is a set of front projectors, a set of back projectors, and a 10 speaker sound system. The Front Projection System consists of 3 CRT beams on a curved 180?screen. This type of projector is the best for immersive environments because it provides a seamless and continuous view. The CRT projectors also have a higher dynamic range, provide varying grayscale intensities for high contrast white and black, and the colors are richer than tradition projectors. The front projectors also have the advantage of handling a higher scan rate, which allows 3D stereo viewing. The Rear Projection System screens are multi-paneled allowing for orientation reconfigurability. The back projectors are LCD technology. The main component is on a chip, which can be mass-produced. This reduces cost and is easier to maintain. This system allows for experimentation of scalable pixel display density. This is achieved by adding additional back projectors to form a multi-tiled mosaic. The back projectors also allow one to stand at the screen without blocking the display.

The Console is a movable station with three keyboards, a mouse, a joystick and three monitors. It also has a VCR and a DVD player. All configurations are controlled through a touch panel that allows switching on/off of any of the projectors, speakers, and keyboards. Input and output from any of the units in the Computer Room or other parts in the building can be channeled through the Console. All presentation aspects of the laboratory are piloted from the Console. The Console is connected via a flexible cable, and can be moved within the Visualization Laboratory, including behind the curved screen.

The Edit Studio consists of a dual 700Mhz Pentium PC based non-linear editing workstation (NLE). The NLE has 170 Gigabytes of fiber channel storage for video, 7.8 Gigabytes for audio, 5.4 Gigabytes for projects, and a Jazz drive for external input/output. The Pentium PC has a 512 Megs of ram and a Diamond Fire GL1 (32Meg) graphics card with dual monitors and a StudioZ Burst video capture and playback adapter. Other equipment in the Edit Studio are a Panasonic RAMSA digital mixer VUR-DA7, a electronic musical instrument and effects processor Kurzwell K2500xs Keyboard, Yamaha Digital multi-rack recorder D24, Apogee 24-bit Digital Audio converter AD-800, a CD player Tascam CD-150, a cassette player/recorder Tascam 112R MKII, a DVD player Panasonic DVD-T2000, Two Sony VCRs SVHS HiFi VCR + SVD-2000, a Yamaha RC-D24 remote controller/locator, a Crestron CPC-2000 camera control unit, three NTSC Panasonic color monitors, four Mackie sound speakers, an Inline IN31608 presentation switcher, a Folsom Research Model 9700 XL autosync video converter, a Snell & Willcox KUDOS CVR45D four fields 4:2:2 standards converter, a Snell & Willcox Super Visor, a DPS digital component AV synchronizer, a Tektronix SPG 422 component Digital Sync Generator, patch panels for audio and video, two Panasonic remote control units WV-RC550, a Cestron Professional control processor CNMSX-PRO, and a Leitch video distribution amp FR-640. An adjoining side-closed room is used as an voice recording area and is equipped with a professional Neumann TL103 digital microphone, two computer monitors, one NTSC monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Watcom tablet.

The Computer Room is made up of four major sections: two discrete computing and visualization sections, a large storage section, and a programmable video input/output section. The computing and visualization sections are composed of a Compaq Computer Cluster (prisms) and an SGI Onyx 2. Both of these sections will do high-performance parallel computing and visualization. Although both the "Onyx 2" and the "Cluster" have storage space for active jobs, a large number of data sets are stored in RAIDS. A Promise UltraTrack SX4000 has been installed for large data storage for the Cluster. The last section controls the graphics output of both the Onyx 2 and the Cluster. This is the RGBHV Matrix switcher. This unit allows video graphics from the Onyx 2 or the Cluster to be connected to any of the visual outputs in the Visualization Laboratory. It also allows switching of video from other computers and/or rooms within the ACES building.

The Compaq Computer Cluster has 129 nodes, each node consisting of one/two 800Mhz CPU, 2 UltraScsi-3 hard drives (9.1 gig and 18.2 gig), 100 Mbps Ethernet, an nVidia FX 5200 graphics card, a CD ROM, and 512MB RAM. The "Cluster" is in a four-row configuration, with each row having 32 Compaq SP750s. Each row has a name for reference; the names are compute-0, compute-1, compute-2, and compute-3. The compute-1 row has Server/Net II network cards. These high-speed network cards communicate at 1 Gig bps and are connected via a Server/Net switch. The compute-2 row has 1 Gig bps fiber network cards, which are connected via a Cisco network switch. The Cluster is driven by a Rocks 3.2.0 (Shasta) frontend. X is installed and configured on all compute nodes. Documentation is available here.

The SGI Onyx 2 has 24 CPUs, 25 Gigs of RAM, and 6 Infinite Reality-2 graphics pipes. It provides a standard commercial supercomputing environment.

A Promise UltraTrack SX4000 is configured to RAID-5 and has 750GB effective storage space, which is used for storage, archiving, and retrieval of large data sets. The RAID is connected to a PCI-64 SCSI-320 card mounted on the cluster frontend.

The RGBHV/Audio Matrix is a programmable 64-input/64-output video switch. It controls the red, green, blue, horizontal sync, and vertical sync, and allows users to switch between the various video inputs and outputs. Switching can be done via a touch panel, web based interface, or computer program. This provides for better use of shared resources, whether computers or video presentation systems.

Glossary
HIPPI 800 Megabits per second parallel IO networking system
ATM OC-3 155 Megabits per second fiber connection.
NOC Network Operations Center ; The central ATM switch.
SDI Serial Digital Interface; 270 Mb/s for digital video