The LBNL/NERSC VisPortal effort explores ways to deliver Grid-based
advanced visualization and data analysis capabilities through a Web
Portal interface. The portal paradigm offers a means to deliver
customized visualization and data management services to users of the
computing and visualization resources of the NERSC center (Seaborg,
HPSS, PDSF, escher). From a single access point the user can browse
through the data, do file management and launch all components of a
distributed application, automating complex workflows and hiding the
complexity of the grid infrastructure.
Example services:
- AMRVolume Renderering
- The amr volume rendering application takes
advantage of graphics hardware to accelerate the offscreen volume
rendering of hierarchical adaptive meshes. The client component of this
aplication runs in the user's workstation and the back-end can make use
of the offscreen hardware rendering using SGI Onyx IR2 pipes or a
parallel software implementation that can run in a cluster environment.
The portal's primary role is to select an appropriate resource and the
parameters to launch the back-end and to launch the client in the user's
workstation, automating a process that would otherwise require launching
each piece independently with the appropriate parameters in different
machines.
- MPEG generation using IDL
- the user needs to run an IDL script to
produce a movie with data from simulations that run in Seaborg. The
portal provides an interface to select the data file and to select the
mpeg parameters. It transfers the file to a machine that has IDL
licenses available, launches the IDL job and sends an email to the user
with a URL to retrieve the movie.
The exercise of creating a working implementation with a controlled set
of (NERSC) users is critically important for identifying the
deficiencies of the current technology and for driving the direction of
future middleware development. This experience will prove very useful in
the development and deployment of production grid portals.