N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 1 NERSC Visualization Greenbook Workshop Report June 2002 Wes Bethel LBNL

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 2 The context: NERSC provides cycles to DOE, users are remote. What visualization capabilities do users need? The workshop: Invite NERSC users and a few vis people to Berkeley. Let the users speak, make the vis people listen. The workshop was all about what users want, not vis people hawking solutions looking for a problem.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 3 Workshop Findings (1/7) Establish a coherent program that focuses on remote visualization. A remote visualization program should provide tools and infrastructure that can be used by multiple “virtual teams.”

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 4 Workshop Findings (2/7) Establish mechanisms whereby generally applicable visualization technology is developed and deployed in a centralized fashion.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 5 Workshop Findings (3/7) Develop a research program in interactive visualization with running codes that stresses the integrated design and development of coupled simulation- visualization methods.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 6 Workshop Findings (4/7) Establish a research program in the areas of multi- field visualization and multi-dimensional data visualization.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 7 Workshop Findings (5/7) Establish a research program in the area of automated data exploration for next-generation petascale datasets.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 8 Workshop Findings (6/7) Significantly enhance life science data visualization efforts, with particular emphasis upon the relationship with scientific data management.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 9 Workshop Findings (7/7) Develop new programs that link visualization with data management and provide support for multiresolution representations of large datasets, support for simultaneous display of data from disparate sources, support for the ability to generate and display derived values, and the ability to pose queries and display results.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 10 Lessons/Observations –More focus on effective remote visualization is needed. Network performance not sufficient for remote apps (X11-based). Remote use of commercial applications. Real demand for a Diva. –Users want free, easy-to-use tools that actually work. –Effective vis techniques are domain specific. Chris Co’s PIC on AMR grids visualization work. –Institutional support for vis is a highly valued by users. –“Linked data sets” and data mining are important. –Don’t forget about 2D plotting tools. –Better two-way communication needed between users and vis community.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 11 NERSC Opportunities Portal-based launching of vis applications. Theme: point and click interface to choose data, choose application, then run: –MPEG generator –Visapult and AMR volume renderer (data format problem) –Websheets – visualization spreadsheet to “find stuff in data.” –Problem: Grid software hard to use, GPDK only quasi-stable… Remote license deployment More training materials: web-based, AG classes, etc.

N ATIONAL E NERGY R ESEARCH S CIENTIFIC C OMPUTING C ENTER 12 The Document URL to the findings document: vis.lbl.gov/Publications/2002/VisGreenFindings-LBNL internal.pdf To appear in the Summer 2003 issue of the International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications.