Lens
| Lens |
The visualization capabilities at the National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) include a medium-sized visualization/data analysis cluster called lens, a large PowerWall display called EVEREST, and a visualization laboratory.
Lens
Lens is a 32 node Linux cluster dedicated to data analysis and high-end visualization. Each node contains four quad-core 2.3 GHz AMD Opteron processors with 64 GB of memory, and 2 NVIDIA 8800 GTX GPUs.
The primary purpose of lens is to enable data analysis and visualization of simulation data generated on jaguar so as to provide a conduit for large scale scientific discovery. Members of allocated jaguar projects will automatically be given accounts on lens.
Spider Now Available from Lens
The Lustre filesystem known as Spider is now available on Lens. Spider is also available as the default work area on the XT5 partition of Jaguar.
- Default Work Area
- At this time, the default /tmp/work/$USER links have not been altered. Spider will become the default work area for Lens in the near future. All Lens users will be notified once the date for this change has been set.
- Access
- Until the /tmp/work/$USER links have been altered to point to the Spider filesystem, /lustre/widow1/scratch/$USER should be used to access the filesystem on lens.
- PBS
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At times, Spider may be unavailable due to maintenance or testing. During these periods of unavailability Lens may remain available. To prevent batch jobs that require the Spider filesystem from running during these periods, the
gresPBS option is available. The following option can be added to a batch script on Lens to prevent jobs from being scheduled when Spider is unavailable from Lens:
#PBS -lgres=widow1
More information on filesystems available from Lens can be found on the filesystem page.
EVEREST
EVEREST (Exploratory Visualization Environment for REsearch in Science and Technology) is a large-scale venue for data exploration and analysis. EVEREST measures in at an impressive 30 feet long by 8 feet tall. Its main feature is a 27-projector PowerWall with an aggregate pixel count of 35 million pixels. The projectors are arranged in a 9×3 array, each providing 3,500 lumens for a very bright display. Displaying 11,520 by 3,072 pixels, or a total of 35 million pixels, the wall offers a tremendous amount of visual detail. The wall is integrated with the rest of the computing center, creating a high-bandwidth data path between large-scale high-performance computing and large-scale data visualization. EVEREST provides a premier data analysis and visualization capability and facility in the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
Using EVEREST
EVEREST is controlled by a 14 node cluster. Each node contains four dual-core AMD Opteron processors. These 14 nodes have nVidia QuadroFX 3000G graphics cards connected to the projectors, providing a very-high-throughput visualization capability. Scientists can make use of the EVEREST facility by contacting any member of the visualization team and booking a time.
Visualization Laboratory
The visualization lab acts as an experimental facility for development of future visualization capabilities. It also serves as a staging area for technology to be deployed in EVEREST, staff offices, and conference rooms. It houses a 12-panel tiled LCD display, test cluster nodes, interaction devices, and video equipment.
