A major portion of our development effort for the modules which have been completed has been directed at the communications interface between the Y-MP and the T3D. This includes data conversion, exchange, and distribution, as well as process control. All of the T3D modules employ a data parallelism model based on the owner computes rule. As we attempt to implement additional modules from the AVS module library, we expect to devote more effort to developing and benchmarking parallel implementations for the algorithms which are employed in modules such as fft, convolve, tracer, and volume render.
In the future, our work will also address the creation of new T3D application modules using AVS as the user interface for the application. To accomplish this, we are in the process of developing a Module Generator targeted for the T3D. With this tool it will become possible to quickly incorporate T3D code into an AVS module.
We intend to use the Module Generator to create T3D modules for new modelling and visualization applications on the T3D. In particular, we propose to adapt a large-scale 3D reservoir model to the T3D AVS environment using the proposed T3D Module Generator. This type of model is one of the fundamental tools which the oil industry in Alaska, and around the world, uses to model and enhance petroleum production. However, the underlying reservoir modelling technique is not limited to hydrocarbons and may also be applied to other subsurface flow problems, such as groundwater contamination.
Another application of interest is the processing of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from earth-orbiting satellites. Production code is already running on the T3D which performs the computationally expensive process of calibrating and rectifying SAR images so they may be used in large area mosaics and combined with other satellite imagery, such as LandSat and AVHRR [12].