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A Distributed GPU-Based Framework for Real-Time 3D Volume Rendering of Large Astronomical Data Cubes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

A. H. Hassan ,
C. J. Fluke  and
D. G. Barnes
A. H. Hassan*
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Vic. 3122, Australia
C. J. Fluke
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Vic. 3122, Australia
D. G. Barnes
Affiliation:
Monash e-Research Centre, Monash University, Clayton, Vic. 3800, Australia
*
CCorresponding author. Email: ahassan@swin.edu.au
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Abstract

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We present a framework to volume-render three-dimensional data cubes interactively using distributed ray-casting and volume-bricking over a cluster of workstations powered by one or more graphics processing units (GPUs) and a multi-core central processing unit (CPU). The main design target for this framework is to provide an in-core visualization solution able to provide three-dimensional interactive views of terabyte-sized data cubes. We tested the presented framework using a computing cluster comprising 64 nodes with a total of 128 GPUs. The framework proved to be scalable to render a 204 GB data cube with an average of 30 frames per second. Our performance analyses also compare the use of NVIDIA Tesla 1060 and 2050 GPU architectures and the effect of increasing the visualization output resolution on the rendering performance. Although our initial focus, as shown in the examples presented in this work, is volume rendering of spectral data cubes from radio astronomy, we contend that our approach has applicability to other disciplines where close to real-time volume rendering of terabyte-order three-dimensional data sets is a requirement.

Keywords

methods: data analysistechniques: miscellaneous
Type
Research Article
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 29 , Special Issue 3: Source Finding and Visualisation , 2012 , pp. 340 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 2012

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