September 2023 OLCF User Conference Call: In Situ Visualization with Ascent
The OLCF hosts monthly User Conference Calls. These calls are your opportunity to speak with center personnel to get the latest updates, express any concerns you may have, etc. No registration is required for this event.
Monthly Topic: In Situ Visualization with Ascent
Speakers: Nicole Marsaglia and Cyrus Harrison (LLNL)
Abstract: Scientific visualization is a key component of simulation workflows. Visualization tools transform mesh data into pictures that help simulation users digest and understand complex scientific results. Visualization is often done post-hoc using files written to disk, however, at extreme scales that model is strained by gaps between I/O and compute speeds. In-memory processing, a type of in situ processing, can help avoid these I/O bottlenecks and allow users to analyze more data. Today we will present Ascent, a flyweight in situ visualization and analysis library, that supports in-memory processing of HPC simulation data. It leverages both distributed-memory (MPI) and many-core (CUDA, HIP, or OpenMP) parallelism to provide raytracing, contouring, etc. using the same HPC resources as a host simulation application.