VOLUME VISUALIZATION ON MASSIVELY PARALLEL COMPUTERS

THIS RESEARCH IS DIRECTED TOWARD THE VOLUME VISUALIZATION ONA MASSIVELY PARALLEL COMPUTER (MPC) OF THE ANALYZED RESULTS IN PARALLEL WITH TIME-DEPENDENT ANALYSIS. IN THE PRESENT VOLUME VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUE, THE VOLUMETRIC DATA THAT MAYBE OBTAINED FROM NUMERICAL OR EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ARE DIRECTLY RENDERED ONTO THE SCREEN. THE TECHNIQUE IS OBJECT ORIENTED AND IS BASED ON A CELL-BY-CELL VOXEL PROCESSING TECHNIQUE. IN THIS RESEARCH, AN ACCURATE AND DIRECT METHOD OF VOLUME RENDERING FOR PICTURE DEVELOPMENT IS BEING DEVELOPED BY ASSOCIATING COLOR AND OPACITY VALUES AT THE CELL CORNER. FOR ARBITRARY CELL SHAPES, THE NODAL VALUES ARE APPROXIMATED IN A TRILINEAR FASHION FOR OBTAINING THE COLOR AND OPACITY VALUES INSIDE EACH CELL. SEVERAL TEXTURE MAPPING FUNCTIONS THAT MAP THE DYNAMIC RANGE OF VARIATION OFTHE SCALAR FIELD INTO OPACITY AND COLOR ARE PROVIDED. PHONGSHADING AND AN EMPIRICAL ILLUMINATION MODEL ARE ALSO INCORPORATED INTO THE METHOD. THE ENTIRE VISUALIZATION ALGORITHM IS WELL SUITED FOR AN MPC. IN PHASE I OF THE PROJECT, THE ALGORITHM IS BEING IMPLEMENTED, BOTH ON A SINGLE INSTRUCTION MULTIPLE DATA ARCHITECTURE SYSTEM, AND ONA MULTIPLE INSTRUCTION MULTIPLE DATA ARCHITECTURE MACHINE. THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPED IS INTERACTIVE AND IS BEING INITIALLYTAILORED TOWARD COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS STUDIES, BUT ISTO BE EXTENDED LATER TO OTHER AREAS OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. THE PROBLEM OF INTEGRATING THE TIME-ACCURATE NUMERICAL COMPUTATIONS AND THE VISUALIZATION WILL BE INVESTIGATED DURING PHASE II USING A NAVIER-STOKES SOLVER.