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About Collaviz

Collaviz is an innovative multi-domain remote collaborative platform for the simulation-based design applications.

The major value brought by Collaviz to the scientific and industrial community is to make remote analysis and collaboration easily available and scalable. Web-based technologies, on the top of shared high-performance computing and visualization centers, will permit researchers and engineers handling very large data sets, including 3D data models, by using a single workstation, wherever in the world. Just a “standard” internet connexion will be needed.

The classical approach is not adapted anymore: simulation-based design applications tend to generate Terabytes and even Petabytes of data and:

  • The (worldwide) networks are still not strong enough (10 Gb/s -and soon 40 Gb/s- is the infrastructure’s backbone but 10Mb/s or less are the common daily network of users), to transfer back these data from centralized supercomputer centers where the data are computed to the local client for processing,
  • Even with multi-core technologies, researchers’ and engineers’ local computing resources are not suited to treat this kind of volume of data anymore.

Collaviz proposes a smart solution to break the bottlenecks of data volume production and processing that the industry will quickly face.

In the scope of the Collaviz project, we will concentrate our effort on dimensioning the platform to especially address the pre- and post-processing needs within the simulation- based design chain: these steps are indeed the most consuming applications with respect to the size of data to process and visualize while it requires the manipulation of 3D meshes. Meeting the expectations of researchers and engineers involved in these tasks is the best proof of concept for the Collaviz platform and the best chance of success for such a platform in the industry.

Collaviz will deal with 4 major challenges:

  1. To provide applications designed for habits of very different communities (geophysics, fluid dynamics, structure, biochemical, drug design…),
  2. To use mainstream technologies for the service access (low bandwidth internet access, standard hardware for visualization…),
  3. Interactive and participative collaboration, not only remote “shared display” visualization.
  4. Moreover, these technologies have to be accessible easily, and Collaviz will provide the proper tools to manage all the services from a user and administrator point of view, to have a full transparent access to these scalable resources: visualization clusters, grid computing, etc.  (The biggest data there’s to work on, the more power there’s to allocate).

Collaviz is a natural evolution of the V3D subproject in SCOS (ANR project) and
CARRIOCAS (SYSTEM@TIC competitiveness cluster) projects. Both projects are
preparing part of the underground technologies and software needed by Collaviz. Some outputs of the PART@GE (ANR project) and IOLS (SYSTEM@TIC project) project will also strengthen the collaborative works in Collaviz. More than a single project, Collaviz should be understood as a way for valorization of previous collaborative R&D projects and every scientific computing codes needing remote and/or collaborative functionalities.

Collaviz will bring a step further several outputs of these projects, by:

  • A large panel of advanced scientific visualization services along to the whole modeling chain, with, as already mentioned, a special focus on the pre- and post-processing services. Beside post processing visualization services to explore and analyze large simulation data, Collaviz shall offer to remote users pre-processing services, like mesh adaptation and optimization, in a collaborative way.
  • The Collaviz design would propose an industrial lightweight and Web visualization client as the SCOS/V3D project has demonstrated the proof-of-concept. But thedesign will also allow the integration into other scientific tools or Integrated Modeling Environments (IME).
  • The concept of Web services is then generalized in a way close to the concept of distributed Integrated Modeling Environment (IME). The aim of IMEs is to establish a homogeneous link between several services and scientific modules (e.g. visualization, numerical kernels, data-processing tool boxes…), provide common user interface and built-up a self-consistent process along the modeling chain. In opposite to previous modeling platforms, where this integration was done locally or through a central software solution, the key concept of IMEs is to provided only interfacing and communication middleware between services (local or remote) and a set of shared tools (e.g. visualization). An innovation of Collaviz is a fully transparent orchestration of the different services for the end user. Collaviz will also propose innovative 3D scalable and adaptive streaming solutions to efficiently deliver large data to visualization clients with different hardware resources (thin or rich clients).
  • A rich collaboration service, which integrates not only basic distributed collaborative work, tools but also the sharing of a 3D virtual collaborative workspace.

The Collaviz will reuse 100% of the SCOS/V3D proves-of-concept outputs: server-
data transmission, parallelization of data processing and introduction of collaborative aspects. The VisuPortal smart resources management system in CARRIOCAS for HPC and graphic resources will also be used as an input of the project, saving time and money and goes deeper in the users needs. The Collaviz project will take high benefits of the parallel post-processing capabilities developed in the WP1.2 of the EHPOC Project of the SYSTEM@TIC competitiveness cluster, and extend it with collaboration and remote
access services.

This effort provides existing and largely used platforms (e.g. Salome, Scilab, EnSight, VTK/Paraview…), as well as standards applications, a remote and collaborative visualization service. This challenging innovation requires the most up-to-date technologies and software approach. Through its open and mutualization’s approach, Collaviz has a tight link with the ISO committee for 3D content for the Web: the Web3D Consortium.