VISIT - a Visualization Interface Toolkit, Version 1.0

Abstract

With the increasing capabilities of both supercomputers and graphical workstations new modes of operation become feasible for numerical simulations that are traditionally performed in batch processing. Connecting a workstation to a compute-server allows for interactive monitoring (online-visualization) and control (computational steering, interactive simulation) of such simulations. Typical issues are the extracting of data and status information from a running simulation, the dynamically changing of parameters, the dynamically attaching to and detaching of the visualization from the simulation and the recording and replaying of simulation results.VISIT is a library that supports the development of interactive simulations. It provides functions for establishing a connection between a simulation and a visualization, exchanging data and eventually shutting down the connection again. VISIT is developed in the Central Institute for Applied Mathematics at the Research Centre Juelich.VISIT uses a simple client-server approach. That means that no central server or data manager is involved. Data is exchanged directly between a simulation (the client) and a visualization (the server). The only third party that comes into play is a directory server that is used for exchanging contact information.VISIT provides support for AVS/Express and Perl/Tk visualization systems and C, Fortran, and Perl language bindings