Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hassan, A. H
• Fluke, C. J
• Barnes, D. G
• Kilborn, V. A

Titel

Tera-scale astronomical data analysis and visualization

Ist Teil von

• Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2013-03, Vol.429 (3), p.2442-2455

Ort / Verlag

London: Oxford University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We present a high-performance, graphics processing unit (GPU) based framework for the efficient analysis and visualization of (nearly) terabyte (TB) sized 3D images. Using a cluster of 96 GPUs, we demonstrate for a 0.5 TB image (1) volume rendering using an arbitrary transfer function at 7-10 frames per second, (2) computation of basic global image statistics such as the mean intensity and standard deviation in 1.7 s, (3) evaluation of the image histogram in 4 s and (4) evaluation of the global image median intensity in just 45 s. Our measured results correspond to a raw computational throughput approaching 1 teravoxel per second, and are 10-100 times faster than the best possible performance with traditional single-node, multi-core CPU implementations. A scalability analysis shows that the framework will scale well to images sized 1 TB and beyond. Other parallel data analysis algorithms can be added to the framework with relative ease, and accordingly we present our framework as a possible solution to the image analysis and visualization requirements of next-generation telescopes, including the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescopes.