Post on 04-Jan-2016
VisIt is an open source, richly featured, turn-key application for
large data. Used by:
Visualization experts Simulation code developers Simulation code consumers
Popular R&D 100 award in 2005 Used on many of the Top500 >>>100K downloads
217 pin reactor cooling simulation Run on ¼ of Argonne BG/P
Image credit: Paul Fischer, ANL
1 billion grid points / time slice
VisIt is used to look at lots of types of simulated and
experimental data.Fusion, Sanderson, UUtah
Particle accelerators, Ruebel, LLNL
Astrophysics, Childs
Nuclear Reactors, Childs
VisIt is used to look at lots of types of simulated and
experimental data.
EarthquakesBoyle, LBL
Environment management, Horsman, LBL
Climate, Prabhat, LBL
Terribly Named!!!… intended for much more than just visualization
Data Exploration Presentations
VisualDebugging
Analysis
General analysis techniques (e.g. integration, volumes, surface areas, etc.)
Specialized analysis (e.g. hohlraum flux at AGEX)
Detectorat AGEX
Detectorprovided by VisIt
(synthetic diagnostic)
What sort of analysis is appropriate for VisIt?
VisIt has a rich feature set. Meshes: rectilinear, curvilinear, unstructured, point, AMR Data: scalar, vector, tensor, material, species Dimension: 1D, 2D, 3D, time varying Rendering (~15): pseudocolor, volume rendering, hedgehogs,
glyphs, mesh lines, etc… Data manipulation (~40): slicing, contouring, clipping,
thresholding, restrict to box, reflect, project, revolve, … File formats (~110) Derived quantities: >100 interoperable building blocks
+,-,*,/, gradient, mesh quality, if-then-else, and, or, not Many general features: position lights, make movie, etc Queries (~50): ways to pull out quantitative information,
debugging, comparative analysis
VisIt employs a parallelized client-server architecture.
Client-server observations: Good for remote
visualization Leverages available
resources Scales well No need to move data
Additional design considerations:
Plugins Multiple UIs: GUI (Qt),
CLI (Python), more…
remote machine
Parallel vis resources
Userdata
localhost – Linux, Windows, Mac
Graphics Hardware
You don’t have to run VisIt You don’t have to run VisIt this way! this way!
You can run all on localhost You can run all on localhost You can tunnel through ssh You can tunnel through ssh
and run all on the remote and run all on the remote machinemachine
VisIt recently demonstrated good performance at unprecedented scale.
● Weak scaling study: ~62.5M cells/core
8
#coresProblem Size
ModelMachine
8K0.5TIBM P5Purple
16K1TSunRanger
16K1TX86_64Juno
32K2TCray XT5JaguarPF
64K4TBG/PDawn
16K, 32K1T, 2TCray XT4Franklin
Two trillion cell data set, rendered in VisIt by David Pugmire on ORNL
Jaguar machine
The VisIt team focuses on making a robust, usable product for end users.
• Manuals– 300 page user manual– 200 page command line interface manual– “Getting your data into VisIt” manual
• Wiki for users (and developers)• Revision control, nightly regression
testing, etc• Executables for all major platforms• Day long class, complete with exercises
Slides from the VisIt class
VisIt is a vibrant project with many participants.
Over 75 person-years of effort Over 1.5 million lines of code Partnership between: Department of Energy’s Office
of Science, National Nuclear Security Agency, and Office of Nuclear Energy, the National Science Foundation XD centers (Longhorn XD and RDAV), and more….
2004-6
User communitygrows, includingAWE & ASC Alliance schools
Fall ‘06
VACET is funded
Spring ‘08
AWE enters repo
2003
LLNL user communitytransitioned to VisIt
2005
2005 R&D100
2007
SciDAC Outreach Center enablesPublic SW repo
2007
Saudi Aramcofunds LLNL to support VisIt
Spring ‘07
GNEP funds LLNL to support GNEP codes at Argonne
Summer‘07
Developers from LLNL, LBL, & ORNLStart dev in repo
‘07-’08
UC Davis & UUtah research done in VisIt repo
2000
Project started
‘07-’08
Partnership withCEA is developed
2008
Institutional supportleverages effort from many labs
More developersEntering repo allthe time
VisIt: What’s the Big Deal?
Everything works at scale Robust, usable tool Features that span the “power of
visualization”: Data exploration Confirmation Communication
Features for different kinds of users: Vis experts Code developers Code consumers
Healthy future: vibrant developer and user communities
“How to make VisIt work after you get home” How to get VisIt running on your machine
Downloading and installing VisIt Building VisIt from scratch
How to get VisIt to read your data Support for shapefiles, NetCDF, HDF5, and 100+
more How to get help when you run into trouble
See http://www.visitusers.org/index.php?
title=Short_Tutorial
Anatomy of a picture
Image credit: Horsman & Bethel, LBL
Satellite image externally obtained and manually registered to simulation space and elevated using height information obtained
from yet another external source.
Satellite image externally obtained and manually registered to simulation space and elevated using height information obtained
from yet another external source.
Contour of scalar field from simulation
Contour of scalar field from simulation
Custom reader to read well bore
data
Custom reader to read well bore
data
Lots of “elbow grease” to make
this picture.
Lots of “elbow grease” to make
this picture.
AGU example: climate
Image credit: Prabhat, LBL
This is basically the “out of box” picture, modulo
changes in color table and annotations.
This is basically the “out of box” picture, modulo
changes in color table and annotations.
Summary
VisIt is a richly featured visualization tool that is capable of visualizing data from many different application areas. Truth in advertising: a general interface & it sometimes
takes a lot of effort to get the visualization you want. VisIt has excellent built in support for large data sets. User resources:
Main website: http://www.llnl.gov/visit Wiki: http://www.visitusers.org Tutorial: http://www.visitusers.org/index.php?
title=Short_Tutorial Contacts:
Hank Childs, hchilds@lbl.gov General VisIt user email list: visitusers@ornl.gov