Visualization in the Linux supercomputing era
Article by Mike Long and Randall Frank

November 2006 issue of Scientific Computing Magazine 

In 1999, the Gordon Bell Prize for achievement in high performance computing was awarded to researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of Minnesota and IBM for a very high-resolution simulation of a shock turbulence model. At the time, it was the biggest data set ever generated — so big that it was impossible to visualize the polygonal surface of the model.  In 2006, the same model was used to set a world visualization record for commercial applications by rendering at a rate of 1.5 billion polygons per second — three times the previous record. The mark was set while running Computational Engineering International’s EnSight DR on a Linux Networx Visualization Supersystem. It was achieved while processing a 589-million polygon model — the largest ever for EnSight DR.  For the full story, click on Features under the November 2006 archive here http://www.scientificcomputing.com/CrtIssueArch.aspx.