The Polder Computing Environment: a system for interactive distributed simulation

The paper provides an overview of an experimental, Grid‐like computing environment, Polder, and its components. Polder offers high‐performance computing and interactive simulation facilities to computational science. It was successfully implemented on a wide‐area cluster system, the Distributed ASCI Supercomputer. An important issue is an efficient management of resources, in particular multi‐level scheduling and migration of tasks that use PVM or sockets. The system can be applied to interactive simulation, where a cluster is used for high‐performance computations, while a dedicated immersive interactive environment (CAVE) offers visualization and user interaction. Design considerations for the construction of dynamic exploration environments using such a system are discussed, in particular the use of intelligent agents for coordination. A case study of simulatedabdominal vascular reconstruction is subsequently presented: the results of computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging of a patient are displayed in CAVE, and a surgeon can evaluate the possible treatments by performing the surgeries virtually and analysing the resulting blood flow which is simulated using the lattice‐Boltzmann method. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[1]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  Lattice-boltzmann and finite element simulations of fluid flow in a SMRX mixer , 1999 .

[2]  R R Edelman,et al.  AHA scientific statement. Magnetic resonance angiography : update on applications for extracranial arteries. , 1999, Circulation.

[3]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  Extensions to time warp parallel simulation for spatially decomposed applications , 1999 .

[4]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  Lattice-Boltzmann hydrodynamics on parallel systems , 1998 .

[5]  Robert R. Edelman,et al.  Magnetic Resonance Angiography , 1999 .

[6]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  Performance of N-body codes on hybrid machines , 2001, Future Gener. Comput. Syst..

[7]  Henri E. Bal,et al.  Design Issues for User-Level Network Interface Protocols on Myrinet , 2000 .

[8]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  Hierarchical Resource Management in the Polder Metacomputing Initiative , 1998, Parallel Comput..

[9]  Stanley J. Rosenschein,et al.  An architecture for adaptive intelligent systems , 1996 .

[10]  A. Hoekstra,et al.  Permeability of Three-Dimensional Random Fiber Webs , 1998 .

[11]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  Shear Stress in Lattice Boltzmann Simulations , 2001 .

[12]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  The implementation of dynamite: an environment for migrating PVM tasks , 2000, OPSR.

[13]  Jonathan Robinson,et al.  A task migration implementation of the Message-Passing Interface , 1996, Proceedings of 5th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing.

[14]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  The distributed ASCI Supercomputer project , 2000, OPSR.

[15]  Henri E. Bal,et al.  Performance evaluation of the Orca shared-object system , 1998, TOCS.

[16]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  GEOPROVE: Geometric Probes for Virtual Environments , 1999, HPCN Europe.

[17]  Steven G. Parker,et al.  Applications in Computational Medicine using SCIRun: A Computational Steering Programming Environment , 1995 .

[18]  Marian Bubak,et al.  Portable library of migratable sockets , 2001, Sci. Program..

[19]  Charles L. Seitz,et al.  Myrinet: A Gigabit-per-Second Local Area Network , 1995, IEEE Micro.

[20]  H. Hoefsloot,et al.  International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids Lattice-boltzmann and Finite Element Simulations of Fluid Flow in a Smrx Static Mixer Reactor , 2022 .

[21]  J.X. Chen,et al.  Advancing Interactive Visualization and Computational Steering , 1996, IEEE Computational Science and Engineering.

[22]  B. D. Kandhai,et al.  Large Scale Lattice-Boltzmann Simulations: Computational Methods and Applications , 1999 .

[23]  Henri E. Bal,et al.  Efficient multicast on Myrinet using link-level flow control , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 International Conference on Parallel Processing (Cat. No.98EX205).

[24]  Miron Livny,et al.  A worldwide flock of Condors: Load sharing among workstation clusters , 1996, Future Gener. Comput. Syst..

[25]  Matthew T. O'Keefe.  Guest-editorial: Parallel Software Design for Weather Simulation Codes , 2000 .

[26]  D. Ku.  BLOOD FLOW IN ARTERIES , 1997 .

[27]  홍윤기,et al.  생산시스템 시뮬레이션을 위한 High Level Architecture/Run­Time Infrastructure의 적용 , 2000 .

[28]  Henri E. Bal,et al.  User-Level Network Interface Protocols , 1998, Computer.

[29]  Carolina Cruz-Neira,et al.  Cosmic Worm in the CAVE: Steering a High-Performance Computing Application from a Virtual Environment , 1995, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[30]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  Simulation of Hierarchical Resource Management for Meta-Computing Systems , 2001, Int. J. Found. Comput. Sci..

[31]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  Experiments with Migration of Message-Passing Tasks , 2000, GRID.

[32]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  The Design of Dynamic Exploration Environments for Computational Steering Simulations , 2000 .

[33]  Makoto Taiji,et al.  Scientific simulations with special purpose computers - the GRAPE systems , 1998 .

[34]  Shiyi Chen,et al.  LATTICE BOLTZMANN METHOD FOR FLUID FLOWS , 2001 .

[35]  P M Sloot.  Simulation and visualisation in medical diagnosis: perspectives and computational requirements. , 2000, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[36]  Thomas J. R. Hughes,et al.  Finite Element Modeling of Three-Dimensional Pulsatile Flow in the Abdominal Aorta: Relevance to Atherosclerosis , 2004, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[37]  Miron Livny,et al.  Managing Checkpoints for Parallel Programs , 1996, JSSPP.

[38]  Ian T. Foster,et al.  Globus: a Metacomputing Infrastructure Toolkit , 1997, Int. J. High Perform. Comput. Appl..

[39]  P. Merkey,et al.  Beowulf: harnessing the power of parallelism in a pile-of-PCs , 1997, 1997 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[40]  Steve Bryson.  Virtual reality in scientific visualization , 1993, Comput. Graph..

[41]  Kees Verstoep,et al.  Evaluating design alternatives for reliable communication on high-speed networks , 2000, SIGP.

[42]  T. Todd Elvins,et al.  VisFiles: virtually lost in virtual worlds—wayfinding without a cognitive map , 1997, COMG.

[43]  Carolina Cruz-Neira,et al.  Surround-Screen Projection-Based Virtual Reality: The Design and Implementation of the CAVE , 2023 .

[44]  Peter M. A. Sloot,et al.  A virtual environment for the exploration of diffusion and flow phenomena in complex geometries , 1998, Future Gener. Comput. Syst..

[45]  Steve Bryson,et al.  Virtual reality in scientific visualization , 1993, CACM.