Research Assistants: F. Knop, E. Mascarenhas, B. Dimitrov, R. Pasquini
Sponsors: ARO, ONR
DISplay is a visualization and user-interaction tool for distributed computing environments. It enables an end-user to develop a graphical interface for interaction with an application, including real-time dynamic displays of results from distributed hosts. The architecture is C++ based, utilizing support from X11, PEX, and Motif for graphical displays. At present the system supports two-way interactions between a user and an application, allowing an application to be configured to respond to user actions. It also supports a variety of tasks (i.e., specific graphical displays) including scatter diagrams, line plots with multiple series, histograms, level graphs, 3D graphs, and network diagrams. Motivated by parallel simulation applications, DISplay permits time-based sequencing/queueing of graphics requests, enabling a coherent view of results from distributed hosts. The system has been used in several applications, including particle physics, numerical analysis, simulated annealing, performance monitoring of parallel computations, and algorithm visualization.