Graphics Scalability Comes of Age

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Silicon Graphics will be showcasing innovations in scalability at SIGGRAPH this year. Exhibits include the ground-breaking Onyx4™ scalable visualization system, new developments in the Linux® Visualization Initiative, and many cross-platform tools for ISVs and developers. The SIGGRAPH show, entering its 21st year (August 8th-12th in Los Angeles), is an international conference of computer graphics and interactive techniques where industry leaders such as Silicon Graphics (booth #1447) show their latest advancements.

Over the last 10 years SGI has delivered many visualization systems offering graphics scalability. Recently the world leading Silicon Graphics® Onyx4™ visualization system has dramatically improved both affordability and maximum scalability. As a result, applications leveraging multiple Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) have become far more common.

This trend has now reached low end systems, setting the stage for an explosion in scalable visualization applications, and making trends in scalability one of the hot topics of discussion between SGI and thought leaders at this year's SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles.

Systems scaling to 8 or more GPUs and over 16 Central Processing Units (CPUs) were once the domain of large research centers such as Los Alamos National Labs, but have now become commonplace among visualization leaders. Scalability is becoming pervasive to solve larger problems, break barriers and increase interactivity in areas as diverse as virtual reality, engineering design, medical visualization, military decision support centers as well as scientific research.

The new affordability of scalable visualization has led to Silicon Graphics® Onyx® systems being deployed throughout the world, with uses including the University of Purdue, for leading research in data perception, NASA Ames Research Center, to display NASA's Mars landing achievements, and the British Museum's new exhibit which has revolutionized archeological understanding of Egyptian mummies [Feature Story].

In turn, leading-edge users such as Los Alamos National Labs have now extended their reach to problems involving terabytes of data by using an 80 CPU, 34 pipe Silicon Graphics Onyx4 with over 256GB of memory.

It is not surprising to see Silicon Graphics breaking barriers, and showing scalability as a way of solving the world's most challenging problems. What is surprising at SIGGRAPH this year are the early signs that scalability is becoming more mainstream, with areas pioneered by Silicon Graphics being adopted even in PCs targeted at home users.

Why now, and what does this mean for advanced visualization systems?

The Data Explosion
Data is growing in complexity and size faster than it can be absorbed and understood by traditional techniques. Many companies say their data will more than double in the next 18 months. For example, currently, car manufacturers perform virtual tests which mimic the limited number of old physical tests they used to perform, producing hundreds of gigabytes of data. Tomorrow's virtual crash tests will use stochastic methods which try hundreds or thousands of variations to find more subtle design issues, and will produce hundreds of terabytes of data that will need to be visualized.