News

April 22, 2009 - UC Davis Genome Center installs HIPerSpace Technology
The Genome Center at the University of California Davis (UCD), has installed a 4x3 (12 tile) display wall adopting our HIPerSpace technology and its CGLX software stack. This newly deployed OptIPortal delivers a combined 48 megapixels worth of display real-estate that will be used by faculty, researchers and students in the UCD Bioinformatics Core. (Read More)

April 17, 2009 - 'Cosmic Tree of Life' on HIPerSpace Wall
The closest that artist Roger Ferragallo has come to displaying the full dimensions of his "Cosmic Tree of Life" digital painting was when he got the chance to display the latest version (2.0) of the art work on Calit2's HIPerSpace tiled display wall at UC San Diego recently. The digital painting measures 556 million pixels, and it was displayed on HIPerSpace's native 287 million pixelsl. If ever "Cosmic Tree of Life" is printed out in its current incarnation, the painting would measure 25 x 15 feet, so HIPerSpace permitted Ferragallo to see the full scope of his work on the tiled display system which measures 31.8 x 7.9 feet. In a video posted on YouTube, Ferragallo talks about displaying and interacting with his work on the HIPerSpace wall. "Cosmic Tree of Life" is also being exhibited online and interactively at GigaPan.com, a project by Carnegie Mellon University with partners, Google Earth, NASA Ames and National Geographic, for displaying panoramic images online. (Read More)

March 3, 2009 - Coastal Bluff Imaging Study Featured in SIO Explorations
Researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Jacob School of Engineering are studying California's coastline to understand how sand from sea cliffs contributes to San Diego's world-famous beaches. "This is the one we have been waiting for," said Scripps researcher Liz Johnstone after arriving at a bluff section at Flat Rock, a popular area for beachgoers at Torrey Pines State Park, that collapsed in September 2008. A 75-foot section of unstable bluff dumped 1,000 tons of sand onto the beach below in the collapse. The section that came tumbling down was from a 45- to 48-million-year old sandstone formation and was one of several collapses along that same stretch of beach in the state park. (Read More)

February 12, 2009 - NASA Lunar Science Institute installs HIPerSpace Technology
The NASA Lunar Science Institute (LSI) has installed a 3x3 (9 tile) display wall adopting our HIPerSpace technology and its CGLX software stack. This newly deployed OptIPortal delivers a combined 36 megapixels worth of display real-estate that will be used by NASA LSI researchers to study lunar data and NASA researchers in general for a broad set of visualization challenges. (Read More)

January 9, 2009 - DOE Awards Supercomputing Grant for Extreme Visualization of Cultural Patterns
High-performance computing and the humanities are connecting at the University of California, San Diego - with a little matchmaking help from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Visual arts professor Lev Manovich talks about the cultural analytics project, and why Calit2's HIPerSpace ultra-high-resolution display wall is part of the research project. The two agencies have awarded 330,000 hours of time on DOE supercomputers to UC San Diego’s Software Studies Initiative (softwarestudies.com) to explore the full potential of cultural analytics in a project on “Visualizing Patterns in Databases of Cultural Images and Video.” The grant is one of three inaugural awards from a new Humanities High Performance Computing Program established jointly by DOE and NEH. (Read More)

November 11, 2008 - Article features Michael Olsen and our Coastal Bluff Erosion Monitoring and Modeling Project
The cliffs along the San Diego coastline are more than just fodder for picture postcards; a number of residential homes sit perched atop them, and in certain areas, the railroad tracks that serve Amtrak and County Coaster come within several feet of the cliff edge. But coastal erosion is changing the landscape of Southern California's beaches, and a team of researchers from UC San Diego is seeking to better understand how waves, groundwater sapping, and sea-level rise are contributing to the gradual eating-away of the beachfront cliffs that line the 20 kilometers between La Jolla and Encinitas. (Read More)

October 31, 2008 - Researchers Look Into the Past with High-Resolution Digital Scans of Italy's Palazzo Medici
The Palazzo Medici, one of most significant landmarks of the Italian Renaissance, has always been something of a touchstone — it was completed in 1460 for the wealthy Medici family and later served as the model for Florence's more ornate Pitti and Strozzi palaces. It's fitting, then, that the palace (now called the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi) has also become a prototype for researchers pursuing high-resolution digital cultural forensics, a field being pioneered by scientists at UC San Diego's Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3). (Read More)

October 29, 2008 - High-Tech Search for Legendary Warlord Utilizing HIPerSpace Technology
Somewhere beneath the wind-swept deserts of Mongolia lies the body of one of the most enigmatic warlords in history, a ruthless but brilliant leader who united his people and built the largest empire in the world. Nearly 800 years after Genghis Khan died, the legends continue to grow, as do the mysteries. Now, a young scientist at the University of California, San Diego, is hoping to succeed, where others have failed, and answer a question that has puzzled historians for centuries: Where, precisely, is the tomb of Genghis Khan? (Read More)

October 27, 2008 - Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation Adopts HIPerSpace Technology for Education
At the recent Digital Education in Action conference held at the John Paul College in Brisbane, AARNet and QCIF constructed the OptIPortal to demonstrate its capabilities to the schools sector. As a significant part of the Digital Education Revolution initiative, the Australian Government is investing $1.1 billion over five years to provide for new or upgraded information and communications technology (ICT) for secondary schools with students in years 9 to 12; with a focus on student computer ratios. This program provides the an opportunity for schools to use a portion of that investment to develop their own OptIPortal and the conference provided a good opportunity to demonstrate its capabilities and potential. The availability of ultra high resolution content is a challenge to a broader appreciation of the OptIPortal, as such the development of a ultra high resolution content bank that is aligned with a schools curriculum would be a worthy project. The OptIPortal generated enormous interest from the students. (Read More)

October 15, 2008 - Researcher Hopes to Find Hidden Tomb of Genghis Khan Using Non-Invasive Technologies
According to legend, Genghis Khan lies buried somewhere beneath the dusty steppe of Northeastern Mongolia, entombed in a spot so secretive that anyone who made the mistake of encountering his funeral procession was executed on the spot. Once he was below ground, his men brought in horses to trample evidence of his grave, and just to be absolutely sure he would never be found, they diverted a river to flow over their leader's final resting place. What Khan and his followers could not have envisioned was that nearly 800 years after his death, scientists at UC San Diego's Center for Interdisciplinary Science in Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) would be able to locate his tomb using advanced visualization technologies being developed by our team. (Read More)

October 14, 2008 - Calit2 & KAUST are Partnering to Create World-Class Visualization and Virtual Reality Research and Training Activities
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the University of California, San Diego today announced a special partnership to collaborate on world-class visualization and virtual reality research and training activities. The Geometric Modeling and Scientific Visualization Research Center (GM&SVRC) is expected to enhance research in areas ranging from solar power to clean water and new medicines. Under the four-year agreement, the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) will provide expertise in visualization, virtual-reality and collaboration tools to support KAUST’s ambitious plan to deploy state-of-the-art technologies for scientific research. (Read More)

October 14, 2008 - The Extension to the San Diego Supercomputer Center is Dedicated and with it a new OptIPortal Powered by our HIPerSpace Technology.
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) opens its new extension and with it launches a new OptIPortal, connected to the NSF TeraGrid via the OptIPuter, an optical network device developed by UC San Diego's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). OptIPuter is widely viewed by high-performance supercomputing experts and users as a key step in creating a computer cyberinfrastructure, by allowing end-users to discover, reserve, and integrate remote computers, storage, and instruments. The new 80 megapixel resolution OptIPortal is based on our HIPerSpace hardware and software stack ( CGLX) and visual analytics tools. It is being used by Michael Norman, SDSC's Chief Scientific Officer and UC San Diego professor of physics. Installed in Norman's Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics and being used to visualize results from his cosmology simulations on the cutting edge petascale machines linked to SDSC through NSF's TeraGrid. (Read More)

October 8, 2008 - The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphics Library (CGLX v1.2.2) was Released With Major Enhancements
The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphic Library (CGLX) Version 1.2.2 Salamander, is now available with major enhancements, including compatibility with the latest Linux distribution and ROCKS 5, a scriptable interface, inter-wall communication, VideoBlaster 2.0 with audio support, fully synchronized capabilities between MAC OS X and Linux, extended API and integrated in-depth documentation. Community feedback about the thoroughly documented CGLX multi-tile development API and knowledge base, assisting with the trouble-shooting of multi-tile display environments and graphics clusters has been overwhelmingly positive. (Read More)

October 6, 2008 - Our HIPerWall Technology and Related Research are a Centerpiece in UC Irvine's Shaping the Future Video
UC Irvine recently released a "Shaping the Future" video showcasing the research, researchers and most of all current and future research, envisioned to shape the future. Our HIPerWall research is a core theme of this video and even though our visualization team has long moved to UCSD, its legacy is carrying on strong, which is exciting to see. (Video)

September 20, 2008 - Space and HIPerSpace: Mars Rover's Rendezvous with Calit2 Display
After Professor Kuester came up with the ingenious name for his tiled-display-on-steroids, dubbing it the HIPerSpace system, it was probably only a matter of time before it would become a window on U.S. space exploration. And that's what happened this week when two NASA engineers, in San Diego for a conference, opted to participate in a Mars Rover sortie while watching incoming images from the Rover and a NASA control room -- all displayed on Calit2's 286-million-pixel HIPerSpace display at UCSD. (Read More)

September 17, 2008 - 3D Virtual Reality Environment Developed at UC San Diego Helps Scientists Innovate
Its name sounds like something out of science fiction, but the StarCAVE at the University of California, San Diego is now a science fact. The virtual-reality environment allows groups of scientists to venture into worlds as small as nanoparticles and as big as the cosmos - permitting new insights that could fuel discoveries in many fields. Early users of the StarCAVE include UC San Diego researchers in biomedicine, neuroscience, structural engineering, archaeology, earth science, genomics, art history and other disciplines. The StarCAVE is a five-sided virtual reality (VR) room where scientific models and animations are projected in stereo on 360-degree screens surrounding the viewer, and onto the floor as well. It was constructed by the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). At less than $1 million, the StarCAVE immersive environment cost approximately the same as earlier VR systems, while offering much higher resolution and contrast. (Read More)

September 16, 2008 - Larry Smarr blogs about HIPerVerse on Calit2Life
In a breakthrough demonstration yesterday, as part of CENIC's CalREN-XD/HPR workshop [www.cenic.org/workshop/] held at Calit2 at UCSD, two research groups at UCI and UCSD momentarily created the world's largest virtual OptIPortal. Using two dedicated one gigabit per second optical links, provided by CENIC as part of the persistent Calit2 OptIPuter, the two HiPerSpace tiled walls at Calit2@UCSD and Calit2@UCI were united into a 124 tile HiPerVerse exceeding 1/2 billion pixels. (Read More)

September 15, 2008 - HIPerVerse Breaks 1/2 Gigapixel Barrier During CalREN-XD/High Performance Research Workshop
One of the demonstrations during this year's CalREN High-Performance Research Workshop involved real-time applications running on dual 1Gbps lightpaths between Calit2's divisions at UC San Diego and UC Irvine. Our team demonstrated the prototype for a prototype system that we call the "HIPerVerse". The technology allows two of the world's highest-resolution, distributed visualization systems - the HIPerSpace display in San Diego and the HIPerWall in Irvine - which were both developed by our team, to be interconnected into ultra-resolution environments at the pixel level. (Read More)

September 8, 2008 - Intel Donates 200 Microprocessors to Promote our Visualization Research
In a gesture of support for the "extreme visualization" research being done by the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Intel Corporation has donated 200 quad-core microprocessors to Calit2's Falko Kuester, professor of visualization and virtual reality. Falko Kuester, Calit2's Professor for Visualization and Virtual Reality, has received a donation of 200 quad-core microprocessors from Intel. "We've long moved away from just processing and viewing the data to visual analytics," explained Prof. Kuester. "If you have a problem and you need to solve it, you have to be able to dissect your data interactively at many scales and dimensions. The Intel microprocessors contain four individual computational cores and can do extremely fast processing in parallel using fairly high-frequency microchips. This is the bandwidth that we need for the type of computation we're doing." (Read More)

September 2, 2008 - Structural Engineers and Computer Scientists Hope to Integrate Disciplines to Revolutionize Building Construction
Despite the breathtaking evolution of computer science over the past 30 years, structural engineering — hindered by a reluctance to adapt to digital innovations — has remained relatively unchanged as a discipline. With this in mind, a group of UC San Diego engineers and computer scientists, together with their counterparts at Germany's Bauhaus University of Weimar, are hoping to completely reform the way buildings are constructed by integrating the two fields and bringing data visualization and online collaboration to the fore of structural design. (Read More)

August 25, 2008 - Our group takes center stage at NVISION 2008 with the OptIPortable (HIPerSpace Nano)
Our team is at NVISION 2008 in San Jose, CA, showing Calit2's ultra-high resolution, multi-tile visualization research. Calit2 took center stage with the OptIPortable (HIPerSpace Nano) placed in the atrium of the San Jose Convention Center, with every visitor coming to the workshop or exhibit passing by the OptIPortable display at least twice each day. There was a lot of excitement about 'portable' high-performance graphics and wearable devices, triggering the HIPerSpace Nano label in conjunction with OptIPortable at the last minute, to relate to the somewhat younger gaming crowd -- which it did. (Read More)

August 14, 2008 - CGLX Now Downloaded over 4,000 Times and Driving Nearly all Major Multi-Tile Systems (OptIPortals).
CGLX has enjoyed tremendous popularity in academia and is now installed on nearly all large-scale multi-tile OptIPortal-type systems. Since this is a relatively small portion when compared to the overall download volume, there must be quite a few happy multi-tile users out there or developers that are experimenting with CGLX's simulation mode, allowing arbitrary tile configurations to be explored in even single display configurations. (Read More)

June 26, 2008 - The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphics Library (CGLX v1.2.1) Now Available Packaged for Mac-OS X
The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphic Library (CGLX) is now available as a package for Mac-OS X bringing the full set of CGLX capabilities and a collection of CGLX-based applications to the Mac. All you will have to do is to download and install the dmg and you are ready to go. (Read More)

July 10, 2008 - UK News Service Says, 'Now That's a Big TV'
A number of international reporters have been inquiring about Calit2's HIPerSpace, unveiled this week in all its 286 million pixels of glory. Marc Chacksfield of Britain's TechRadar online service calls HIPerSpace the "highest-resolution display systems for scientific visualisation in the world." (If you look closely at the words below the photo on TechRadar, the caption reads: "Now that's a big TV.") The writer ends his article with some dry humor: "And what are they displaying on the, er, display. Well, it's certainly not re-runs of Hollyoaks, more footage from the National Geographic and the like." Ironically, and apparently unknown to Chacksfield, the very first group treated to a demo of HIPerSpace and what it can do was a delegation from National Geographic! (And if you're wondering what Hollyoaks means, it's a long-running soap opera on Britain's Channel 4.) (Read More)

July 9, 2008 - UC San Diego Unveils World’s Highest-Resolution Scientific Display System
As the size of complex scientific data sets grows exponentially, so does the need for scientists to explore the data visually and collaboratively in ultra-high resolution environments. To that end, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) has unveiled the highest-resolution display system for scientific visualization in the world at the University of California, San Diego. The Highly Interactive Parallelized Display Space (HIPerSpace) features nearly 287 million pixels of screen resolution – more than one active pixel for every U.S. citizen, based on the 2000 Census. Calit2’s expanded HIPerSpace is an ultra-scale visualization environment developed on a multi-tile paradigm. The system features 70 high-resolution Dell 30” displays, arranged in fourteen columns of five displays each. Each 'tile' has a resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 pixels – bringing the combined, visible resolution to 35,640 by 8,000 pixels, or more than 286.7 million pixels in all. “By using larger, high-resolution tiles, we also have minimized the amount of space taken up by the frames, or bezels, of each display,” said Kuester. “Bezels will eventually disappear, but until then, we can reduce their distraction by keeping the highest possible ratio of screen area to each tile’s bezel.” Including the pixels hidden behind the bevels of each display, which give the "French door" appearance, the effective total image size is 348 million pixels. (Read More)

June 12, 2008 - HIPerSpace Fully Operational at 286,720,000 Pixels Resolution
HIPerSpace has been transitioned into its new home and has in the process grown to an amazing 286,720,000 pixels resolutions, further increasing its research impact and charting the course for next-generation collaborative digital workspaces. HIPerSpace research and application domains now span earth system science, seismology, structural engineering, forensic engineering, remote sensing, cultural heritage diagnostics, emergency management and response, neuroscience, genetics, art, architecture, archeology, edutainment and entertainment, to name a few. (Read More)

June 1, 2008 - The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphics Library (CGLX v1.2.1) is now available as a roll for ROCKS (HIPerRoll)
The Cross-Platform Cluster Graphic Library (CGLX) is now available as a roll for ROCKS. CGLX is a flexible, high-performance OpenGL-based graphics framework for the development of distributed high performance visualization systems such as OptIPortals. CGLX allows OpenGL programs to transparently scale across display clusters and fully leverage the available resources, while maximizing the achievable performance and resolution of such systems. (Read More)

April 22, 2008 - Our research about the Search for the Lost Leonardo is featured on CBS 60 Minutes
The most-watched news program on American television showcased the work of Calit2 researcher Maurizio Seracini in its April 20 edition. In a segment called "The Lost Leonardo", correspondent Morley Safer recounted the UC San Diego researcher's 33-year-old quest to locate the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci mural, "The Battle of Anghiari" - a search to solve what CBS termed one of the most enduring mysteries of the art world (Video). (Read More)

Match 10, 2008 - The National Geographic Society and the City of Florence team up in support of the DaVinci Project
The UC San Diego-based center that is leading the scientific search for a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece has a new partner in the effort: the venerable National Geographic Society. The city of Florence announced this week a five-year agreement with the Society to explore the history and culture of Florence in the pages of National Geographic magazine and books, and the National Geographic Channel on TV. The initial collaboration brings National Geographic into the search for the Battle of Anghiari, a mural painted by da Vinci that disappeared nearly 500 years ago, but is believed to exist behind a brick wall and fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio. (Read More)

January 16, 2008 - Calit2 and University of Melbourne Initiate Australia's Ultra-Resolution Global Collaboration Laboratory
Members of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue (AALD) meeting at Calit2 in San Diego were linked over a super-broadband network to the University of Melbourne's new OptIPortal tiled wall display (based on technology first developed by the Calit2-led OptIPuter project). Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Victorian Premier John Brumby today joined politicians, industry, science and media representatives – on both sides of the Pacific – to experience a powerful, next generation ultra-resolution visualization carried over the super-broadband network linking the University of Melbourne and the UCSD division of Calit2. The OziPortal being presented was based entirely on our HIPerSpace hardware and software stack, including CGLX, TiffViewer, MediaViewer, VideoBlaster and VideoSender. (Read More)

January 11, 2008 - UC San Diego Researchers Acquire Data on Renaissance Landmark in Search for da Vinci Mural
When most tourists visit Florence's famed Palazzo Vecchio, they are ushered off the premises in early evening. But for UCSD graduate students Michael Olsen and Daniel Knoblauch, the museum's closing time was when their real work began. Together with professor Falko Kuester, they spent nearly three weeks in November and December scanning the interior of the historic building's stately Hall of the 500, mostly in the dark. "It was a great opportunity to work in an area where important Renaissance artists worked and so much history happened." (Read More)

August 8, 2006 - Professor Kuester gives invited talk at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC)
Professor Kuester talks about "Massive Data Visualization using Extreme-Scale Visualization Systems" in the Scientific Computing Track at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). The talk goes over the motivation, technical needs and research contributions of HIPerWall, a system that he conceived in 2003 and that him and his team have been developing since. The talk is available through WWDC'06 Session Videos on iTunes. (Read More)

April 16, 2006 - HIPerWall: New Vistas in Scientific Visualization (Apple Profiles our HIPerWall research)
As advanced computer and imaging technologies generate more and larger data sets, the capacity to visualize and interpret that data becomes problematic. To promote new scientific visualization research, the National Science Foundation provided Major Research Instrument funding to develop the HIPerWall visualization system. At 200 megapixels, HIPerWall provides twice the resolution of any other display in the world and approximately ten times the resolution of typical tiled displays. (Read More)