The document discusses porting the VisIVO visualization tool to desktop grids and international projects like EGI-Inspire and EDGI in order to enable exploration of very large astrophysical datasets using grid infrastructures. It provides details on VisIVO's capabilities for 3D rendering and filtering of multidimensional data, as well as its deployment on grids through server, viewer, and web portal components. The goal is to create a production-level VisIVO solution on EDGI that supports typical exploration scenarios on large astrophysical datasets.

1. VisIVO Visualization tool:
Desktop Grid porting
A.Costa,
P.
Massimino,
Ugo
Becciani
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 1

2. Presenta,on
Outline
ü INAF
ü Astrophysical Observatory of Catania
ü VisIVO towards international projects
ü VisIVO @ EGI-Inspire
ü VisIVO @ EDGI
ü Conclusions and future dev. in EDGI
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 2

3. INAF
Na5onal
Ins5tute
For
Astrophysics

4. INAF
INAF
allows
Italy
to
stand
on
a
global
scale,
as
a
partner
for:
• LBT
(Large
Binocular
Telescope)
• Telescopio
Nazionale
Galileo
• European
Southern
Observatory
INAF
has
19
facili5es
in
Italy
and
1
in
the
Canary
Islands
and
has
more
than
1,200
employees.

5. Presenta,on
Outline
ü INAF
ü Astrophysical Observatory
of Catania
ü VisIVO
ü VisIVO towards international projects
ü VisIVO @ EGI-Inspire
ü VisIVO @ EDGI
ü Conclusions and future dev. in EDGI
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 5

6. Astrophysical
Observatory
of
Catania
1880 - Osservatorio Vincenzo Bellini ETNA 2940 m
Founded by Pietro Tacchini

7. Astrophysical
Observatory
of
Catania
1885 - Catania facility in benedictine monastery

8. Astrophysical
Observatory
of
Catania
1966 - Serra la Nave ETNA 1750 m
Both founded by prof. Mario
Girolamo Fracastoro
1966 - Catania

9. Presenta,on
Outline
ü INAF
ü Astrophysical Observatory of Catania
ü VisIVO
ü VisIVO towards international projects
ü VisIVO @ EGI-Inspire
ü VisIVO @ EDGI
ü Conclusions and future dev. in EDGI
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 9

10. VisIVO
project
• 3D
rendering
soUware
– Images
and
movies
• Astrophysical
dataset
as
well
as
any
other
mul5dimensional
tabular
data
from
other
disciplines.
• Visit
the
gallery
with
some
examples
of
cosmological
simula5ons:
– hWp://www.oact.inaf.it/visivo/

11. VisIVO
project
• VisIVOServer
is
designed
to
deal
with
large
datasets.
• It
supports
many
types
of
data
formats:
– HDF5,
VoTables,
Binary
Tables,
– Ascii
,
csv,
fits…

12. VisIVO
Desktop
VisIVOWeb
VisIVOServer
--fformat votable /home/user/
demo/vizier.xml
.....
--x x --y y --z z --color --colortable
--colorscalar scalar0 --glyphs
sphere
Linux
Mac
Windows
Interactive fast
Closely integrated, complementary
navigation and independent !
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 12

13. VisIVO Server
ü Non-interactive command line application that implements
data exploration functionalities: the output is a sequence of 3D
views
ü VisIVO Server è exploration of very large dataset
ü NO LIMIT on data size !
ü Open Source code: project maintained on sourceforge.
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 13

14. VisIVO Server Local
or
Remote
(URL)
User
Data
Basic Architecture
VBT:
VisIVO
Binary
Table
New
VBT
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 14

15. VisIVO Filters
Append Tables: Creates a new table appending data from a list of existing tables
Coarse Volume: Produces a coarsed subvolume with plane extraction from the original volume
Decimator: Creates a subtable as a regular subsample from the input table.
Extract Subregion: Creates a new table from an input table: sub-box or sphere extraction.
Extract Subvolume: Produces a table which represents a subvolume from the original volume
Math. Operations: Creates new fields in a data table as the result of a mathematical operation
between existing fields
Merge Tables: Creates a new table from two or more existing data tables
Point Distribution: Creates a volume using a field distribution on a regular mesh
Point Property: Assigns a property using a field distribution
Randomizer: Creates a random subset from the original data table
Select Fields: Creates a new table using one or more fields of a data table
Select Rows: Creates a new table using limits on one or more fields of a data table
Show Table: Produces an ASCII table of selected fields
Statistic: Creates and plots an histogram of a scalar field in the table
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 15

16. VisIVO Viewer
VisIVO Viewer is a command line application that produces 3D images
from the binary internal data format table (VBT)
The user must specify three fields of the table for 3D representation.
The user can also customize the view by choosing values such as:
- Camera (azimuth/elevation or position, zoom)
- Opacity
- Point shape (pixel/sphere, cube, cone etc..)
- Palette
- ……
- Alternatively, but in a more intuitive way. A view can be generated by
giving the camera and focal point position
OUTPUT: VTK / SPLOTCH
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 16

17. Visualisations
17

18. http://visivoweb.oact.inaf.it
VisIVOWeb http://visivo.port.ac.uk
http://palantir7.oats.inaf.it/
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13rd April 2011 18

19. VisIVOWeb: screen-shots
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13rd April 2011 19

20. Presenta,on
Outline
ü INAF
ü Astrophysical Observatory of Catania
ü VisIVO
ü VisIVO towards international
projects
ü VisIVO @ EGI-Inspire
ü VisIVO @ EDGI
ü Conclusions and future dev. in EDGI
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 20

21. VisIVO
towards
interna5onal
projects
• VisIVO
Server:
strong
points
– It
is
a
C++
project
– Open
Source
and
accessible
via
Sourceforge.net
– Its
architecture
is
designed
in
order
to
grant
an
efficient
data
management.
• In
3
days
any
c++
programmer
can
approach
the
structure
of
the
code
and
begin
to
develop
new
features!
• =>
Dynamic
soUware
evolu5on
in
different
environments.

22. VisIVO @ EGI-Inspire
Work
Package
SA3:
Services
for
Heavy
User
Communi,es
•
Support
the
tools,
services
and
capabili5es
required
by
different
heavy
user
communi5es
(HUCs)
è VisIVO
Library
è VisIVO
using
gLite
and
Grid
catalogue
è VisIVO
Web
portal
for
gLite
grid
è
VisIVO
MPI
version
for
Grid
Nodes
è
VisIVO
CUDA
version
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 22

23. Presenta,on
Outline
ü INAF
ü Astrophysical Observatory of Catania
ü VisIVO
ü VisIVO towards internatinal projects
ü VisIVO @ EGI-Inspire
ü VisIVO @ EDGI
ü Conclusions and future dev. in EDGI
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 23

24. VisIVO @ EDGI
http://edgi-project.eu/
• INAF
–
Astrophysical
Observatory
of
Catania
has
a
subcontract
to
port
VisIVO
to
the
EDGI
Infrastructure
• The
por5ng
ac5vity
will
create
a
produc5on
level
solu5on
that
enables
the
realiza5on
of
typical
explora5on
scenarios
in
large-­‐scale
astrophysical
datasets
• A
customized
VisIVO
Web
portal
will
be
realized
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 24

25. VisIVO @ EDGI
http://edgi-project.eu/
• The
applica5on
will
be
ported
to
and
tested
on
the
EDGI
EGI
-­‐
DG
bridge.
• Collabora5on
with
Intech:
Visitor
Center
in
Winchester
UK
è
SCI-­‐BUS
• VisIVO
iPhone
Applica5on
è
SCI-­‐BUS
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 25

26. Problem: Visualisa5on
of
Large-­‐Scale
dataset
on
Desktop
Grid
• N-­‐Body
simula5ons
represented
by
spa5al
coordinates
and
veloci5es:
Each
snapshot
:
10-­‐100
GB
• We
can’t
solve
this
problem
using
a
single
Work
Unit.
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 26

27. Solu,on:
Mul5
Layer
Resolu5on
• Mul5
Layer
Resolu5on
(MLR)
• This
technique
is
a
“lossy”
compression
method
that
minimize
the
amount
of
data
to
be
used
in
visualizing
a
cosmological
simula5on.
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 27

28. Multi Layer Resolution
Camera
Position
Layer 0: Max Resolution
Layer 1:
Layer 2:
Layer 3:Low Resolution
Layer 0
Layer 1
Layer 2
Layer 3

29. Multi Layer Resolution Properties
Separable:
the
domain
can
be
split
into
sub-­‐domains
Mappable:
we
know
what
por5on
of
the
data
is
required
to
generate
a
given
por5on
of
the
output
with
various
resolu5ons.
Result
Invariant:
The
result
does
not
depend
on
the
number
of
sub-­‐domains
The domain is divided by splitting the VBT
Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011

30. Multi Layer Resolution Properties
Mul5Layer
Resolu5on
Opera5on
N subdomains as input
1 Operation
N subdomains as output
Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011

31. Presenta,on
Outline
ü INAF
ü Astrophysical Observatory of Catania
ü VisIVO
ü VisIVO towards international projects
ü VisIVO @ EGI-Inspire
ü VisIVO @ EDGI
ü Conclusions and future dev.
in EDGI
03/05/11 Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011 31

32. Current Status
At
the
5me
of
wri5ng
(1st
May
2011)
:
VisIVOServer
1.2
is
built
for
linux
Mac
and
Windows
plamorm.
VisIVOServer
1.2
include
all
of
the
features
discussed
in
this
presenta5on
and
in
par5cular:
• Splinng
(and
merging)
capabili5es
for
input
datasets.
• MLR
Opera5on
(designed
and
implemented
for
the
EDGI
project).

33. Thanks!
http://visivo.oact.inaf.it
http://visivoserver.oact.inaf.it
Ugo Becciani – Vilnius 13 April 2011
03/05/11 33