ACADEMIA

Calit2, a UCSD/UCI partnership, and UCSD’s Center for Earth Observations and Applications (CEOA), led by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and partners will showcase how advanced applications − from geoscience to bioscience to genomics − are benefiting from OptIPuter technologies at next week’s SC06 (Supercomputing) conference at the Tampa, FL, Convention Center November 13-17. The OptIPuter project is an NSF-funded Information Technology Research grant to principal investigator Larry Smarr that is developing a powerful, distributed cyberinfrastructure to support data-intensive scientific research and collaboration. Larry Smarr and Peter Arzberger (UCSD) with Dan Sandin (EVL/UIC) at last year's Supercomputing conference. “We’re now in the fourth year of our five-year OptIPuter grant,” said Calit2 director Smarr. “The results of our team’s research are now being applied by many of our partners, as will be seen in many exhibits around the SC06 show floor.” OptIPuter technologies and supported applications will be showcased in: - the Calit2-CEOA research exhibit #1647 (including real-time collaboration with many other exhibits on the show floor) - the Apple exhibit (#1834) - two papers in the technical program - presentations at the National LambdaRail booth (NLR, #1951). - The Calit2-CEOA exhibit will also participate in NLR’s Treasure Hunt. Exhibit demonstrations, in particular, will highlight the “OptIPortal” – which is the appropriate “termination device” for dedicated 1- or 10-gigabit/s optical light paths. An OptIPortal is a cluster running Rocks/SAGE software, driving tiled displays. SAGE serves as a window manager, enabling users to bring up multiple windows − for streaming media, web browsing, or visualization of large datasets. Rocks is an automated cluster configuration technology developed by OptIPuter partner San Diego Supercomputer Center. SAGE has been developed by OptIPuter partner University of Illinois at Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). The applications in the Calit2-CEOA exhibit will include “visual-casting” to create a distributed virtual laboratory; collaborative cyberinfrastructure to support multi-scale, multi-modal, multi-site science; real-time data delivery from land and onboard ship; and interactive visualization to aid in the analysis of Earth science, protein structure, and metagenomic data. SAGE visual-casting will be demonstrated in collaboration with OptIPuter and other research partners on the show floor: Purdue, NBCR/Osaka University, NCHC (Taiwan ), SARA (Amsterdam ), and University of Michigan. EVL and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Computer Network Information Center are scheduled to be engaged remotely via the National LambdaRail during the show. A paper on the SAGE architecture entitled “High-Performance Dynamic Graphics Streaming for Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment,” by Byungil Jeong, et al., will be presented in the Technical Papers part of the program. (Wednesday, 2:30-3:00 PM, room 20-21) The demonstration featured at the Calit2-CEOA exhibit during the press tour at SC06’s Monday night gala, by Mark Ellisman, will show the use of integrative, collaborative cyberinfrastructure to support multi-site interaction with high-resolution neuroscience datasets and 3-D models of neuronal subcellular structures derived from light microscopy and electron tomography. Ellisman is director of the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR) and the Center for Research in Biological Structure, both at UCSD. This demo will be complemented by a technical presentation titled “Large Image Correction and Warping in a Cluster Environment,” by Vijay S. Kumar, et al., who will discuss efficient execution of a pipeline of data processing operations on very large images obtained from confocal microscopy instruments. (Tuesday, 11:00-11:30 AM, room 18-19) Presentations by OptIPuter partners in the NLR exhibit (#1951) will include Larry Smarr speaking on “OptIPuter Technologies Enable Genomic and Oceanographic Research” (Tuesday, 3:30 PM), Jason Leigh of EVL speaking about “Global Lambda Visualization Facility and SAGE Visual-Casting” (Tuesday, 4:30 PM), and Maxine Brown of EVL speaking on “TransLight and GLIF.” (Wednesday, 4:30 PM)