Data analysis and visualization environment advancements
The Data Analysis and Visualization Lab enhances scientific workflow by providing UCAR's research community with a highly advanced computing environment tailored for the specialized needs of interactive data post-processing, analysis, and visualization. This evolving environment provides a unified state-of-the-art computing environment comprised of powerful, closely coupled, interactive processing and visualization engines and large-capacity high-performance global file systems. We provide direct support to the research community by developing algorithms for relevant visualization and analysis methods and by producing animations and imagery on behalf of the scientific staff.
Generated by Benjamin Jamroz, Ed Lee, and
Thorwald Stein, this image illustrates the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.
DASG helped host the TOY summer school where 30 Ph.D. students spent three
weeks at NCAR learning about computation and visualization of scientific
data sets. DASG's remote visualization services and VAPOR software provided
students a unique opportunity to work with 3D visualizations of their
computational data. The CISL Data Analysis and Visualization Lab provides
computing resources and consulting expertise to meet the interactive data
exploration needs of the entire UCAR scientific community. CISL's
state-of-the-art data analysis capabilities play an integral role
in the scientific discovery process for groundbreaking research in
the geosciences.
The goals of this effort are focused on addressing the growing sizes and complexity of scientific problems being researched at UCAR. We have seen a significant increase in resolution and data set sizes that require not only the enhancement of NCAR computational resource capability and capacity, but that also challenge us to provide advanced services and tools. The Data Analysis Services Group works not only to provide a suitable computational environment but also works directly with users to help develop new techniques and algorithms that allow scientists to push the boundaries of discovery. This work supports NCAR's strategic priorities of "Developing and providing advanced services and tools" and "Maintaining an innovative and creative workplace."
The evolution of this facility from a collection of dedicated standalone resources into a tightly coupled unified computing environment has been a multi-year process. In FY2008 we made great strides in aquiring and integrating a large-scale shared storage solution and powerful computational and graphics resources. We have enhanced the visualization capabilites through the use of remote desktop graphics software that expands this service into the data post-processing and analysis arena and powerful servers capable of handling today's large data sets. We have begun centralizing a high-performance storage cluster to provide high bandwidth data access shared between NCAR's supercomputer, data analysis cluster, and visualization cluster, significantly enhancing the scientific workflow.
By continuing this integration in FY2009 with additional computational, visualization, and storage enhancements, we will offer the data post-processing, analysis, and visualization community an entirely new and well-designed facility to tackle the larger challenges on the horizon.
This ongoing service is supported by NSF Core funds including CSL funding.