The system has been used in several application areas including particle physics, numerical analysis, simulated annealing, performance monitoring of parallel computations, and algorithm visualization.

The software architecture is C++ based, utilizing support from X11, PEX, and Motif for graphical displays. Its design allows for the addition of new features.

At the current time DISplay supports two-way interactions between a user and the 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.

A future release of DISplay is planned with task support for arcs, polygons, and 3D surfaces. DISplay permits multiple processes to write to a single task, enabling a unified view of a display from a distributed computation.

Motivated by parallel simulation applications, DISplay permits time-based sequencing/queueing of graphics requests, enabling consistent view of results from parallel/distributed computations.