Distributed visualization using workstations, supercomputers, and high speed networks

• Published in: Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Visualization '91 pp. 379 - 382
• Main Authors: Robertson, David W., Jacobson, Van L., Johnston, William E., Loken, Stewart C., Theil, Edward H., Tierney, Brian L.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Los Alamitos, CA, USA IEEE Computer Society Press 22-10-1991
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Networks; Networks > Network protocols
• ISBN: 0818622458; 9780818622458
• DOI: 10.5555/949607.949673

Access to supercomputers via the high speed wide area networks being developed will enable sophisticated, interactive visualization on local workstations. As an experiment, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center collaborated to demonstrate the possibilities for such distributed applications. The test case was visualization of 3D magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, with a Cray performing surface reconstruction to generate a set of triangles. The resulting geometric data was sent to a local workstation to be rendered, with minor enhancements to current network protocols enabling effective utilization of the 45 megabit bandwidth of a T3 based network.