ITEE Innovation Expo 2008 : Project Details

Applications software on the OptiPortal display

Jean Francillard’s abstract: OptIPortals are ultra-high resolution tile-able displays built from off-the-shelf consumer products, and driven by a small cluster. One of the main target audiences of those displays is scientific communities, who often share a great interest in the capacities of those devices. They have the ability to visualize, at ultra-high resolution, very large and complex data sets, to use real-time 3D applications, or videoconferencing in HD while using the display as a workspace from remote locations. Very specific networks and software configurations are required in order to use those devices, and have led to many software as well as hardware developments in order to achieve scalability, flexibility and usability. One of those results has been the birth of software architectures supporting those displays. Two main solutions developed: SAGE (Scalable Graphics Adaptive Environment) and CGLX (Cross-Platform Cluster Graphics Library), each of them built on different software paradigms. They now define standards for future developments and lay out general designs for future software based on them. However, there is no straightforward way to integrate common applications into those architectures. This portability issue is an active research topic, and as such is the central problem this research project is trying to address.