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<h1>Welcome to the PowerWall!</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="overview.html"><b>PowerWall Overview</b></a>
<li><a href="../../images/pwschematic.gif"><b>PowerWall Schematic</b></a>
<li><a href="facts.html"><i>Amazing</i><b> facts about the PowerWall</b></a>
<li><a href="team.html"><b>About the University of Minnesota PowerWall Team</b></a>
</ul>
<a href="http://www.umn.edu/">The University of Minnesota</a> in
collaboration with <a href="http://www.sgi.com/">Silicon Graphics,
Inc.</a>, Ciprico, Inc. and <a href="http://www.ibm.com/">IBM</a> Storage
Products Division, has successfully constructed and demonstrated a high
performance, high resolution visualization system called the
<i>PowerWall</i>. On display in Silicon Graphics Booth #401 at
Supercomputing '94, this system
consists of two <a
href="http://www.sgi.com/Products/Onyx-Product_Main.html">POWER ONYX</a>
supercomputers, each equipped with 8 <a
href=http://www.mips.com/HTMLs/R8000_B.html> MIPS R8000 </a> processors, 2
GB main memory, 15 fast/wide SCSI-2 I/O channels, 2 HiPPI channels, 12
Ciprico disk arrays (192 GB total per system), 2 <a
href="http://www.sgi.com/Products/5Onyx-Product.html"> RealityEngine2 </a>
graphics engines, and 2 Electrohome Marquee 8000 projection screen
displays.
<p>
The <a href="http://www.sgi.com/Products/Onyx-Product_Main.html">POWER
Onyx</a> graphics supercomputer is based on the 64-bit <a
href=http://www.mips.com/HTMLs/R8000_B.html>MIPS RISC R8000</a>
microprocessor which offers a SPECfp92 of 310. The R8000 microprocessor is
the first superscalar implementation of the MIPS architecture and is
designed for symmetric multiprocessing so that multiple processors can be
closely coupled within the same computer.
<h2>Display Hardware</h2>
The PowerWall's display is a single 6 foot by 8 foot screen illuminated
from the rear by a 2 by 2 matrix of Electrohome video projectors. These
projectors are driven by 4 RealityEngine2 graphics engines. Each projector
provides a resolution of 1600x1200 pixels (~2 MegaPixels), making the
entire PowerWall resolution 3200 x 2400 pixels (~8 MegaPixels). The
Ciprico disk arrays supply the RealityEngines with more than 300 MegaBytes
per second of data in order to display smooth motion animation across the
entire viewing area. The PowerWall does not consist solely of a high
resolution display system; it is in itself a supercomputing system. In
the configuration set up at Supercomputing '94, the PowerWall is an
integrated visualization system connected by a HiPPI network to the POWER
CHALLENGEarray distributed parallel processing system which includes large
and extremely fast disk storage systems for raw or image data and many
powerful Silicon Graphics MIPS R8000 processors.
<h2>PowerWall Purpose</h2>
The primary purpose of the PowerWall is to visualize and display very high
resolution data from large scientific simulations performed on
supercomputers or from high resolution imaging applications. In addition
to this high resolution, the PowerWall provides a large 6 foot by 8 foot
display area to facilitate collaborations of small groups of researchers
using the same data. All the collaborators can see the display clearly and
without obstruction, and the rear-projection technology makes it possible
to walk up to the display and point to features of interest, just as one
would do while discussing work at a blackboard.
<p>
The PowerWall can be used as a Virtual Reality (VR) system as well by
utilizing specialized software for navigating through data sets. These
data sets could come from computer simulations or for example, satellite
observations of terrain and data archives such as meteorological or
geological archives. These data sets can be accessed by applications
running on the Silicon Graphics systems that drive the PowerWall. As the
user explores the data sets, the PowerWall also becomes a window onto the
virtual world of the simulation.
<p>
At the Supercomputing '94 demonstration, the PowerWall is used to explore
interactively a data set taken from the largest simulation to date of
homogeneous, compressible turbulence, a simulation carried out a year ago
by the University of Minnesota team using an array of 16 20-processor
Challenge XL servers from Silicon Graphics. Raw data representing the
velocity field in the simulation is rendered into images with the Power
Challenge Array and displayed interactively on the PowerWall. This
turbulence simulation produced a data set of half a terabyte. The
PowerWall enables scientists to put entire data sets of this size on line
for fully interactive exploration. The ultimate intended result is of
course the scientific insight which alone can be obtained by viewing all
the data interactively from any angle using any desired method of
visualization.
<h2>Hardware Vendors</h2>
<a href="http://www.sgi.com">Silicon Graphics, Inc.</a> is the leading
manufacturer of high-performance visual computing systems. The company
delivers interactive three-dimensional graphics, digital media and
multiprocessing supercomputing technologies to technical, scientific and
creative professionals. Its subsidiary, <a href=http://www.mips.com/>MIPS
Technologies, Inc.,</a> designs and licenses the industry's leading RISC
processor technology for the computer systems and embedded control
markets. Silicon Graphics has offices worldwide and headquarters in
Mountain View, California.
<p>
Ciprico Inc., an ISO certified company, designs, manufactures, markets, and
services disk arrays and SCSI adapters for high-performance visual
computing markets. The company's products are sold worldwide to
professionals in the scientific computing/visualization,
satellite/telemetry. oil and gas, film and video, medical imaging,
prepress, and video service industries. Applications in these industries
require high performance, capacity, and fault tolerance from storage
subsystems such as Ciprico's RAID disk array. Ciprico markets its products
through a direct sales force, independent representatives, and VARs and is
headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota with offices worldwide.
<h2>The PowerWall Team</h2>
The University of Minnesota team is headed by Dr. Paul Woodward, a
Professor of Astronomy at the <a href="http://www.umn.edu/">University of
Minnesota.</a> Woodward is also the Director of the Laboratory for
Computational Science and Engineering, formerly Graphics and Visualization
Officer at the University's Army High Performance Computing Research Center
and is a Fellow of the <a href="http://www.msi.umn.edu">Minnesota
Supercomputer Institute</a>. He
has been involved in scientific visualization of fluid flows, and in
high-speed computer animation of images from supercomputer simulations in
particular, since 1986. The fluid flow simulations performed by his group
in Minnesota on supercomputers built by <a href="http://www.cray.com/">Cray
Research</a>, <a href="http://www.think.com/">Thinking Machines,</a> and <a
href="http://www.sgi.com/">Silicon Graphics</a> were carried out using the
Piecewise-Parabolic Method (PPM) which he developed with collaborators at
the <a href="http://www.llnl.gov/">Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory</a> and at the <a href="http://www.umn.edu/">University of
Minnesota</a>. The PowerWall team at Minnesota includes Thomas Ruwart,
David Porter, Kevin Edgar, S. Anderson, Michael Palmer (visiting from
<a href="http://www.caltech.edu/">Caltech</a>), Russell Cattelan, Thomas
Jacobson, Jeff Stromberg, and Thomas Varghese.
<h2>Contributors</h2>
Construction of the PowerWall would not have been possible without the
generous donations from its contributors.
The construction of the PowerWall system -- the display, the disks, the
tape system, and the computing and image rendering engines -- was supported
by the industrial partners already mentioned and by the Army Research Office,
the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Research, the National
Science Foundation, and NASA.
<p>
<i>
(Note: if you made a contribution to the PowerWall and would like to have
it mentioned in this page, please let
<a href="mailto:webmaster@lcse.umn.edu">us</a>
know.)
</i>
<h6>
Silicon Graphics is a registered trademark and POWER Onyx, POWER
CHALLENGEarray and RealityEngine2 are trademarks, of Silicon Graphics, Inc.
MIPS is a registered trademark and R8000 is a trademark of MIPS
Technologies Inc.
</h6>
<hr>
<address> <a href="mailto:webmaster@lcse.umn.edu">webmaster@lcse.umn.edu</a> ~ Last Updated March 24, 1994</address>
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