A VISUAL ANALYSIS SYSTEM FOR VERY LARGE, MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATA SETS

THE LARGE, MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATA SETS GENERATED IN NUMERICAL AND EMPIRICAL SCIENCE ARE OFTEN DIFFICULT TO ANALYZE. NEW STRATEGIES ARE NEEDED FOR STORING, TRANSPORTING, AND GRAPHICALLY RENDERING THESE RESULTS. NORTHWEST RESEARCH ASSOCIATES, INC. PROPOSES A SYSTEM BASED ON WRITE-ONCE OPTICAL DISK STORAGE FORMATS COMPATIBLE WITH BOTH MAINFRAME SYSTEMS, WHERE THE NUMBERS ARE GENERATED, ANDMICROCOMPUTER-BASED WORKSTATIONS, WHERE THE DATA ARE TO BE ANALYZED. THE PHASE I-PROJECT WILL SEEK TO ESTABLISH THE FEASIBILITY OF AN INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS SYSTEM PROVIDING VISUAL ACCESS TO MULTIDIMENSIONAL, MULTIVARIATE DATA SETS COMPRISED OF HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF NUMBERS. THE EXISTING GRAPHICS SYSTEMS ARE NOT WELL-SUITED FOR DEALING WITH VERY LARGE DATA SETS REPRESENTING CONTINUUM PROCESSES. THESE SYSTEMS ARE GENERALLY BASED ON DISPLAY-LIST REPRESENTATIONS THAT ARE OPTIMIZED FOR DATA DEFINING DISCRETE OBJECTS. FOR RASTER DISPLAYS AND DATA IN MATRIX FORM, A MORE EFFICIENT APPROACH IS TO DERIVE THE IMAGE PIXEL ARRAY DIRECTLY FROM THE DATA ARRAYS BY INTERPOLATION AND PROJECTION PROCESSING. IN PHASE I, NEW GRAPHICS-GENERATION STRATEGIES BASED ON THE PARALLEL PROCESSING CAPABILITIES INHERENT IN FRAME-BUFFER ARCHITECTURES WILL BE DEVELOPED AND TESTED THAT INCLUDE FEED-BACK LOOK-UP TABLE TRANSFORMATIONS.