RIVA: A versatile parallel rendering system for interactive scientific visualization

JPL's Remote Interactive Visualization and Analysis System (RIVA) is described in detail. The RIVA system integrates workstation graphics, massively parallel computing technology, and gigabit communication networks to provide a flexible interactive environment for scientific data perusal, analysis, and visualization. RIVA's kernel is a highly scalable parallel perspective renderer tailored especially for the demands of large datasets beyond the sensible reach of workstations. Early experience with using RIVA to interactively explore and process multivariate, multiresolution datasets is reported; several examples using data from a variety of remote sensing instruments are discussed in detail and the results shown. Particular attention is placed on describing the algorithmic details of RIVA's parallel renderer kernel, with emphasis on the key aspects of achieving the algorithm's overall scalability. The paper summarizes the performance achieved for machine sizes up to more than 500 nodes and for initial input image/terrain bases in the 2 Gbyte range.