Register      Login
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia Society
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
RESEARCH ARTICLE

A Distributed GPU-Based Framework for Real-Time 3D Volume Rendering of Large Astronomical Data Cubes

A. H. Hassan A C , C. J. Fluke A and D. G. Barnes B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Vic. 3122, Australia

B Monash e-Research Centre, Monash University, Clayton, Vic. 3800, Australia

C Corresponding author. Email: ahassan@swin.edu.au

Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 29(3) 340-351 https://doi.org/10.1071/AS12025
Submitted: 13 March 2012  Accepted: 1 May 2012   Published: 22 May 2012

Abstract

We present a framework to volume-render three-dimensional data cubes interactively using distributed ray-casting and volume-bricking over a cluster of workstations powered by one or more graphics processing units (GPUs) and a multi-core central processing unit (CPU). The main design target for this framework is to provide an in-core visualization solution able to provide three-dimensional interactive views of terabyte-sized data cubes. We tested the presented framework using a computing cluster comprising 64 nodes with a total of 128 GPUs. The framework proved to be scalable to render a 204 GB data cube with an average of 30 frames per second. Our performance analyses also compare the use of NVIDIA Tesla 1060 and 2050 GPU architectures and the effect of increasing the visualization output resolution on the rendering performance. Although our initial focus, as shown in the examples presented in this work, is volume rendering of spectral data cubes from radio astronomy, we contend that our approach has applicability to other disciplines where close to real-time volume rendering of terabyte-order three-dimensional data sets is a requirement.

Keywords: methods: data analysis — techniques: miscellaneous


References

Becciani, U., Antonuccio-Delogu, V., Gheller, C., Calori, L., Buonomo, F. & Imboden, S., 2000, Arxiv preprint (astro-ph/0006402)

Becciani, U., Antonuccio-Delogu, V., Buonomo, F. & Gheller, C., 2001, Arxiv preprint (astroph/0101447)

Becciani, U., Gheller, C., Antonuccio, V., Ferro, D. and Melotti, M., 2003, MmSAIS, 1, 80

Beeson, B., Barnes, D. and Bourke, P., 2003, PASA, 20, 300
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Booth, R., De Blok, W., Jonas, J. & Fanaroff, B., 2009, Arxiv preprint (arXiv:0910.2935)

Comparato, M., Becciani, U., Costa, A., Larsson, B., Garilli, B., Gheller, C. and Taylor, J., 2007, PASP, 119, 898
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Eilemann, S., Makhinya, M. & Pajarola, R., 2008, in ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2008 courses (New York: ACM), 44

Gheller, C., Buonomo, F., Calori, L. & Becciani, U., 2002, in Proceedings of Joint Eurographics-IEEE TCVG Symposium on Visualization (Barcelona: Eurographics Association), 1

Goel, V. and Mukherjee, A., 1996, The Visual Computer, 12, 26

Gooch, R., 1995, in Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Visualization '95 (Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society), 374

Hassan, A. H. and Fluke, C., 2010, PASA, 122, 119
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Hassan, A., Fluke, C. and Barnes, D., 2011, NewA, 16, 100
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | 1:CAS:528:DC%2BC3cXht1els7rK&md5=a0b6817853d48f097677870182c147b1CAS |

Hockney, R. & Eastwood, J., 1988, Computer Simulation Using Particles (London: Taylor & Francis)

Humphreys, G., Houston, M., Ng, R., Frank, R., Ahern, S., Kirchner, P. & Klosowski, J., 2008, in ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2008 courses (New York: ACM), 43

Jin, Z., Krokos, M., Rivi, M., Gheller, C., Dolag, K. & Reinecke, M., 2010, ArXiv 1004.1302

Johnston, S. et al., 2008, ExA, 22, 151

Kaehler, R., Wise, J., Abel, T. & Hege, H., 2006, in Eurographics/IEEE VGTC Workshop on Volume Graphics, ed. R. Machiraju & T. Moller (Boston: Eurographics Association), 103

Kaufman, A., 1998, SIGGRAPH Course notes, Advances in Volume Visualization 24

Lacroute, P. & Levoy, M., 1994, in Proc. 21st Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (New York: ACM), 451

Levoy, M., 1988, ICGA, 8, 29

Levoy, M., 1990, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 9, 245
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Lombeyda, S., Moll, L., Shand, M., Breen, D. & Heirich, A., 2001, in PVG ’01: Proceedings of the IEEE 2001 Symposium on Parallel and Large-Data Visualization and Graphics (Piscataway: IEEE Press), 115

Magnor, M., Hildebrand, K., Lintu, A. and Hanson, A., 2005, in IEEE Visualization 2005, VIS 05 (Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society), , 255

Marmitt, G., Friedrich, H. & Slusallek, P., 2008, in Computer Graphics Forum, Vol. 27 (New York: John Wiley & Sons), 1687

Maximo, A., Ribeiro, S., Bentes, C., Oliveira, A. & Farias, R., 2008, in IEEE/EG Int. Symp. Volume and Point-Based Graph., ed. H. C. Hege, D. Laidlaw, R. Pajarola & O. Staadt (Barcelona: Eurographics Association), 55

McClure-Griffiths, N. M. et al., 2009, ApJS, 181, 398
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | 1:CAS:528:DC%2BD1MXlvFCmu78%3D&md5=1dd575d855dd9de9d1889c6adc5bc142CAS |

Molnar, S., Cox, M., Ellsworth, D. & Fuchs, H., 2008, in ACM SIGGRAPH ASIA 2008 courses (New York: ACM), 35

Muller, C., Strengert, M. & Ertl, T., 2006, in Proc. EG Symp. Parallel Graphics Vis. (PGV), ed. A. Heirich, B. Raffin & L. P. dos Santos (Barcelona: Eurographics Association), 59

Muller, C., Strengert, M. and Ertl, T., 2007, ParC, 33, 406

Nadeau, D., Genetti, J., Napear, S., Pailthorpe, B., Emmart, C., Wesselak, E. and Davidson, D., 2001, Computer Graphics Forum, 20, 27
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Oosterloo, T., 1995, PASA, 12, 215

Oosterloo, T., 1996, VA, 40, 571

Payne, H., Jedrzejewski, R. and Hook, R., 2003, ADASS, 12, 449

Röttgering, H., 2003, NewAR, 47, 405
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Scharsach, H., 2005, Proceedings of CESCG, 5, 67

Schwarz, N., 2007, Master's Thesis, University of Illinois

Strengert, M., Klein, T., Botchen, R., Stegmaier, S., Chen, M. and Ertl, T., 2006, The Visual Computer, 22, 550
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Stuart, J. A., Chen, C.-K., Ma, K.-L. & Owens, J. D., 2010, in HPDC ’10: Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing , ed. S. Hariri & K. Keahey (New York: ACM), 841

Wallis, J., Miller, T., Lerner, C. and Kleerup, E., 1989, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 8, 297
Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | 1:STN:280:DC%2BD1c%2Fntl2jsA%3D%3D&md5=0a2670111b609bd848d2505957990f9aCAS |

Westover, L., 1990, ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, 24, 376