VISUALIZATION

Second Generation High Performance Visualization System Delivers Greater Visualization Capability, Productivity, and Integration: Linux Networx today announces the immediate availability of its second generation LS-V High Performance Visualization System, providing the ability to render very large simulations in real time and delivering insightful results quicker and more efficiently than ever before. The enhanced LS-V delivers a system experience that uniquely balances ease of use with compute, interconnect, high performance I/O, and visualization based upon real-world, proven high-performance computing (HPC) expertise. "We were able to put the system into production on the day of its arrival -- typically such systems can take weeks, or even months to get up and running," said Kent Misegades, president of Computational Engineering International. "Additionally the system, along with advances to EnSight DR, enables new visualization capabilities, such as interactive, large-scale transparencies -- models that allow you to look through surfaces. Finally, the system reversed our preconceptions and showed that balanced I/O can favorably impact performance -- the integrated GPFS file system significantly improves our interactive ability to view large transient data sets." The innovative technology that forms the core of the LS-V has been previously deployed in very large Linux clusters, including systems for the Army Research Laboratories and CIS Hollywood. A Linux Networx Supersystem recently established a distributed rendering record for the fastest render rate of 1.5 billion polygons per second while running Computational Engineering International's (CEI) EnSight DR -- three times the previous EnSight DR rendering record. Additionally, a record 589 million polygon model was processed -- the largest ever for EnSight DR. With the addition of Linux Networx' GPFS high performance file system, the second-generation LS-V has shown performance increases of 300% over the first generation LS-V. "Visualization is becoming increasingly more vital to visual effects designers due to the increasing complexity of the effects being rendered," said Matt Ashton, systems manager at CIS Hollywood. "The Linux Networx system gave us the power to quickly generate and simulate effects cost-effectively. In addition it was easy to set-up and administer, allowing us to focus on rendering visual effects and meeting our studio deadlines, not on supercomputing management." "The launch of the second-generation LS-V continues our focus of delivering easy-to-use compute and visualization solutions to the aerospace, automotive, energy and government users," said Jack Kenney, CEO of Linux Networx. "Engineers now have unprecedented power to rapidly research, discover, and innovate -- visualizing extremely large data sets with our unique blend of speed, power, and simplicity." Second-generation LS-Vs feature a range of updated AMD Opteron Dual-Core CPUs, InfiniBand interconnects, fully integrated data I/O subsystems, and the optional Linux Networx GPFS high performance file system. The LS-V is configured in turnkey, production-ready systems ranging in size from 3 to 31 visualization nodes, fully scalable from individual users through large corporate visualization centers. LS-V capabilities can be easily added to the full range of existing Linux Networx Supersystems, giving users of the most popular computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, and other computer-aided engineering applications a fully integrated high performance computational and visualization solution.