ACADEMIA

ModViz today announced Virtual Graphics Platform (VGP) 1.3 with a new Graphics Resource Manager, improved Distribution Engine and local state tracking which combine to deliver superscaling performance for rendering large volumetric and geometric datasets on clusters of commodity-based graphics computing nodes. Now engineers, designers or scientists using their existing computing resources can dynamically access the 3D graphics capabilities of a visualization cluster, enabling the real-time interaction, analysis and interpretation of significantly larger and more complex data. "The superscaling level of performance provided by VGP 1.3 will help our clients significantly shorten existing design and exploration cycle time, providing end results in less time," said Tom Coull, chief executive officer of ModViz. "One recent test of VGP 1.3 running an eight GPU cluster demonstrated a 60-fold performance increase over a one GPU system. VGP 1.3 is a powerful and economical way to accelerate workflow in scientific fields such as seismic interpretation, engineering and scientific visualization, digital mockup and bio-medical engineering. ModViz has established itself as a key provider of software solutions that deliver supercomputing level visualization with extreme data size and scalability on clusters of 3D graphics computing nodes. The latest software release from ModViz continues the firm's success in meeting the visual computing needs and budget requirements of its end-user clients. "VGP is a very attractive and compelling product for enabling large data cluster-based visualization," said Jean-Claude Dulac, president and CEO of Earth Decision. "Part of Earth Decision's strategy to provide the most effective solutions for our oil and gas exploration and production customers is to partner with key technology providers. We look forward to working with ModViz to deliver a joint product solution that can efficiently manage extremely large seismic data in real-time and significantly reduce oil exploration cycle time." Additional features of the VGP 1.3 release include support for advanced OpenGL features such as the OpenGL Shading Language, the capability to handle advanced display configurations such as non-planar displays, and compatibility with Xinerama and DMX. To leverage the newest professional workstation architectures, VGP 1.3 now supports dual-CPU/dual-GPU hardware configurations. In addition, VGP 1.3 significantly reduces the main memory requirement for 3D graphics applications running on the application node by offloading graphics objects onto the cluster.