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Expanding the Application Base of the SAGE Collaboration

Platform

Javier Delgado

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Overview• General Research Area• Summary of SAGE• Benefits of SAGE• Drawbacks of SAGE• My goal• My tentative research plan

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General Research Area• Enhancing collaboration through

visualization:• enable personalized virtual meetings• allow work to be shared directly• centralized environment for scientific

visualization

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SAGE Overview• Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment• Vizualization, collaboration

source: http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/sage/gallery.php

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SAGE Overview

source: http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/sage/gallery.php

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SAGE Overview

source: http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/sage/description.php

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Alternative• Distributed Mulithead X (XDMX)

• for combining displays• AccessGrid

• for videoconferencing and display sharing• Chromium

• for high-resolution 3-D image rendering

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Alternative• Requires “Shared Applications” for

collaboration• Difficult to deploy• No automatic scaling of pixels

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SAGE Benefits• Visualization

• Analysis of highly-detailed images• Weather forecasting, high-resolution image

rendering, etc.• Collaboration

• Share displays of users distributed widely apart

• Videoconference at the same time• Less transportation required for meetings

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SAGE Drawbacks• Unfamiliar interface• No direct control of display

• requires using SAGEUI or command line interface

• Requires SAGE-specific applications• Biggest problem

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Application-Specificness• Limited set of available applications

• video player, image viewer, 3-D rendering suite

• But what if we want to:• View a presentation?• View a webpage?

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My Goal• Expand the application base• Option 1: Modify the applications

• Requires learning design of application being ported• Redo for new features, bug fixes, security updates

• Option 2: Transparently allow existing applications to write to a SAGE display

• requires knowledge of:• Underlying X server• Architecture of SAGE

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Preliminary Research Plan• Find ways to enhance classroom

experience using SAGE• Develop SAGE Applications• Modify simple open-source application for

SAGE• Read design documentation related to

X11

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Similar Projects• XGL – X server layered on top of OpenGL

• client that intercepts control of the X server• transforms all windows and elements into

textures• AIGLX – module for X server

• same effect as XGL without modifying X

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Conclusion• Maximizing collaboration efficiency

requires improving collaboration environments

• SAGE is the right direction, but needs improvement

• Improving it will require extensive research

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Questions?

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Thank You!