SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING NEWS

The Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM), part of the FZ Juelich Research Centre in Germany, has selected the Multi-Pipe Edition of AVS/Express from Advanced Visual Systems (MUZE) for use in its immersive visualization laboratory. The FZ Juelich facility, boasting a staff of 4,300 researchers, is devoted to basic and applied research in various fields of science and technology and is investigating current issues in the areas of matter, information, life, environment, and energy. It is one of the largest research institutions in Europe.

High-performance computing is at the core of the services offered to the German research community by FZ Juelich. Two Cray T3E massively-parallel systems and a Cray T90 vector-parallel computer are available, as are large visualization systems and robotic mass storage systems. ZAM coordinates the planning and operation of the central computing systems and networks at FZ Juelich, including the supercomputer systems for the John von Neumann Institute for Computing.

The visualization of very large datasets generated by simulations on the high-performance computer systems is a key ZAM objective. For that reason, the Centre selected the Multi-Pipe Edition of AVS/Express as well as a HoloBench immersive VR display system from TAN, to provide scientists with a direct window into supercomputer simulations. Advanced features of the Multi-Pipe Edition of AVS/Express (including direct support for stereo head- motion-tracking and 6 degree-of-freedom wand devices) will be fully integrated into the ZAM initiative.

The Centre has also developed specialized tools to allow direct computational monitoring and steering of high performance simulations from within a distributed visualization environment. Using a library for online visualization and steering known as VISIT (Visualization Interface Toolkit), developed by Thomas Eickermann and Wolfgang Frings, researchers are able to dynamically attach and detach themselves to simulations and engage in a bi-directional exchange of data. VISIT was initially developed at ZAM in the Gigabit Testbed West project and includes support for AVS/Express and Perl/Tk and has C, Fortran, and Perl language bindings. The computational steering system has been used on a number of successful projects including 3D medical volume image processing, computational molecular dynamics and pollution transport through 3D soil systems.

The VISIT system, coupling AVS/Express Multi-Pipe Edition (MPE) to large- scale simulations is now available for the AVS user community from the web site at http://www.fz-juelich.de/zam/visit/ .

AVS/Express is used by software developers to create dynamic visualization applications that can be broadly deployed on any combination of Compaq, Digital, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Linux, SGI, and Sun platforms, providing end users with powerful visual insight to all types of engineering, scientific and business data. AVS/Express software and custom solutions provided by the professional services group of Advanced Visual Systems have been widely deployed in the medical imaging, oil & gas, geographic information systems, defense, aerospace, telecommunications, financial, data mining and educational/research industries.

About MUSE Technologies and Advanced Visual Systems

MUSE Technologies Inc is an international leader in data visualization and perceptual computing software and solutions that enable computer users to experience and interact with all types of business, scientific and engineering information. MUSE offers a complete line of products that bring data to life on all major computing platforms using the latest in graphics, Web-based and collaborative technologies. MUSE subsidiaries include Advanced Visual Systems, MUSE Virtual Presence, MUSE Simulation Solutions, MUSE VRsource and SimTeam, all of which are dedicated to assisting clients in nearly every industry speed the process of data analysis and decision-making.

For more information on MUSE Technologies, see http://www.musetech.com . Information about AVS is available at http://www.avs.com

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