VISUALIZATION

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- NASA, United Space Alliance (USA) and Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:SGI) have teamed to create one of the world's highest performing visual film analysis systems. SGI provided the complete state-of-the-art, greater than high-definition imaging solution, including scanning capabilities, image analysis capabilities and time-synched review capabilities of multiple cameras. The system, built by SGI Professional Services, is currently being used to review and analyze previous shuttle flight data at the NASA Ice/Debris Team's Image Analysis Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for the shuttle fleet's return to flight. Prior to the Columbia accident on Feb. 1, SGI had discussed upgrading the Image Analysis Facility with NASA, a longtime SGI customer. Following the accident, NASA requested that SGI immediately design a system that could produce extremely high-resolution 4K scans from various speeds of 16 mm and 35 mm film and video taken from the almost 70 cameras at the launch pad. NASA scientists could then analyze and manipulate those images. A fully implemented SGI(R) Reality Center(R) facility and advanced SGI(R) TP9500 data management subsystem combine to create an environment that will now allow NASA scientists to perform preliminary video analysis within hours of a shuttle launch and provide more detailed film analysis the day after launch. With the new system, NASA's Ice/Debris Team now can analyze full-frame, real-time, standard-definition and high-definition video at 1280x720 pixels and can analyze 16 mm and 35 mm film data at 4096x3112 pixels. The system was designed to process 150,000 frames of film and 300,000 frames of video within two weeks of a launch. "The Kennedy Space Center Ice/Debris Team sought a system with the capacity to handle launch film for image analysis and evaluation," said Armando Oliu, Final Inspection Team lead for the shuttle program. "SGI's experience with NASA's Kennedy Space Center and the entertainment film industry helped us meet our analysis goals. The new system is a valuable tool that has greatly enhanced our image analysis capabilities." SGI systems engineers from the entertainment Media Industries sector proposed the system based on their years of experience in designing systems to attain the most precisely detailed, highest quality visual images and effects possible. Customers have included EFILM, a Los Angeles cutting-edge digital cinema lab, and Ascent Media Group, the largest aggregation of post-production companies in the world. In addition to digital manipulation technologies from the film entertainment industry, SGI leveraged its expertise in image analysis capabilities installed throughout the commercial, medical imaging and manufacturing industries, as well as the Department of Defense and other government agencies. "SGI is honored to work with NASA and USA to architect and deliver the world's most advanced visual analysis solution for shuttle return to flight," said Jan Silverman, senior vice president, Industry Solutions and Services Group, SGI. "We are proud to assist NASA in vigorously seeking visual information analysis to help the agency spot and fix problems that could affect the integrity of the shuttle. We're gratified that our digital media expertise providing higher-resolution visualization to the Hollywood community, combined with our high-performance computing capabilities, can help NASA build a visual analysis system that meets hard-core government specifications to ensure the safety of manned space flight." The SGI Reality Center Environment at NASA Built by SGI Professional Services, the multi-display system is designed to allow everything from multiple-person collaboration to highly detailed manipulation and evaluation of specific imagery. The SGI Reality Center environment with a Reality Center Insight(TM) 7-foot display is powered by the 12-processor SGI(R) Onyx(R) 3000 rackmount visualization supercomputer with two InfiniteReality4(TM) graphics pipes. Film is scanned through an Imagica XE(R) scanner. The SGI(R) solution runs Interactivefx Piranha HD software for pan/tilt/zoom around the frame, to add real-time effects and for image isolation and filtering, as well as film restoration software from Mathematical Technologies, Inc. Silicon Graphics(R) Octane2(TM) visual workstations are currently being fed non-real-time 4K images that can be visualized on a superhigh-resolution IBM(R) T221 flat panel monitor. Digital infrastructure for data storage and networking is provided by the SGI TP9500 RAID storage array, containing 30TB of storage. The data is accessible at a bandwidth of 2GB per second and can easily store the estimated 10TB and potentially15TB of raw film data that could be ingested after a single launch.