OLCF-Developed Visualization Tool Offers Customization and Faster Rendering

February 14, 2018

Feb. 14, 2018 — At the home of America’s most powerful supercomputer, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), researchers often simulate millions or billions of dynamic atoms to study complex problems in science and energy. The OLCF is a US Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

SIGHT visualization from a project led by University of Virginia’s Leonid Zhigilei to explore how lasers transform metal surfaces. Image courtesy of OLCF.

Finding fast, user-friendly ways to organize and analyze all this data is the job of the OLCF Advanced Data and Workflow Group and computer scientists like Benjamín Hernández, who has developed a new visualization tool called SIGHT for OLCF users.

“The amount of data users deal with is huge, and we want them to be able to easily visualize their datasets remotely and in real-time to see what they are simulating,” Hernández said. “We also want to provide ‘cinematic rendering’ to enhance the visual perception of visualizations.”

Through scientific visualizations, researchers can better compare experimental and computational data. Using a type of scientific visualization known as exploratory visualization, researchers can interactively manipulate 3D renderings of their data to make new connections between atomic structure and physical properties, thereby improving the effectiveness of the visualization.

However, as scientific data grow in complexity, so too do memory requirements—especially for exploratory visualization. To provide an easy-to-use, remote visualization tool for users, Hernández developed SIGHT, an exploratory visualization tool customized for OLCF user projects and directly deployed on OLCF systems.

As opposed to traditional visualization in which images are often rendered during post-processing, exploratory visualization can enable researchers to improve models before starting a simulation; make previously unseen connections in data that can inform modeling and simulation; and more accurately interpret computational results based on experimental data.

Hernández incrementally developed the exploratory visualization tool SIGHT by working with a few teams of OLCF users to fold in the specific features they needed for their projects.

To study how lasers transform metal surfaces to create complex, multiscale roughness and drive the ejection of nanoparticles, a team led by materials scientist Leonid Zhigilei of the University of Virginia used Titan to simulate more than 2 billion atoms over thousands of time steps.

“The initial attempts to visualize the atomic configurations were very time-consuming and involved cutting the system into several pieces and reassembling the images produced for different pieces,” Zhigilei said. “SIGHT, however, enabled the researchers at the University of Virginia to take a quick look at the whole system, monitor the evolution of the system over time, and identify the most interesting regions of the system that require additional detailed analysis.”

SIGHT provides high-fidelity “cinematic” rendering that adds visual effects—such as shadowing, ambient occlusion, and photorealistic illumination—that can reveal hidden structures within an atomistic dataset. SIGHT also includes a variety of tools, such as a sectional view that enables researchers to see inside the chunks of atoms forming the dataset. From there, the research team can further explore sections of interest and use SIGHT’s remote capabilities to present results on different screens, from mobile devices to OLCF’s Powerwall, EVEREST.

SIGHT also reduces the amount of work users must wade through upfront. Out-of-the-box tools come with many customization options and an underlying data structure that adapts the product to run on a variety of systems but slows performance by taking up more memory.

Hernández has so far deployed SIGHT on Rhea, OLCF’s 512-node Linux cluster for data processing, and DGX-1, a NVIDIA artificial intelligence supercomputer with eight GPUs. On both Rhea and DGX-1, SIGHT takes advantage of high-memory nodes and optimizes CPU and GPU rendering through the CPU-rendering OSPRay and GPU-rendering NVIDIA OptiX libraries.

Keeping data concentrated on one or a few nodes is critical for exploratory visualization, which is possible on machines like Rhea and DGX-1.

“With traditional visualization tools, you might be able to perform exploratory visualization to some extent on a single node at low interactive rates, but as the amount of data increases, visualization tools must use more nodes and the interactive rates go down even further,” Hernández said.

To model fundamental energy processes in the cell, another user project team led by chemist Abhishek Singharoy of Arizona State University simulated 100 million atoms of a membrane that aids in the production of adenosine triphosphate, a molecule that stores and transports energy in the cell. Using Rhea, collaborator Noah Trebesch from Emad Tajkhorshid’s laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign then used SIGHT to extended molecular visualization of biological systems to billions of atoms with a model of a piece of the endoplasmic reticulum called the Terasaki ramp.

Compared to a typical desktop computer with a commodity GPU that a researcher might use for running SIGHT at their home university or institution, using SIGHT for remote visualization on Rhea enabled higher particle counts and frame rates by several orders of magnitude. With 1 terabyte of memory available in a single Rhea node, SIGHT using the OSPRay backend to reveal over 4 billion particles and there is still memory available for larger counts.

Furthermore, running SIGHT on the DGX-1 system with the NVIDIA OptiX backend resulted in frame rates up to 10 times faster than a typical desktop computer and almost 5 times faster than a Rhea node.

Anticipating the arrival of Summit later this year, Hernández is conducting tests on how remote interactive visualization workloads can be deployed on the OLCF’s next-generation supercomputer.


Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire