Distributing a GIS using a parallel data approach
John R. Monde, Michael Wild · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1998
The limitations of serial processors for managing large computationally intensive dataset problems in fields such as visualization and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are well known. Parallel processing techniques, where one or many computational tasks are distributed across a number of processing elements, have been proposed as a solution to the problem. We describe a model for visualizing oceanographic data that extends an earlier technique of using data parallel algorithms on a dedicated parallel computer to an object- oriented distributed visualization system that forms a virtual parallel machine on a network computers. This paper presents a visualization model being developed by the University of Southern Mississippi demonstrating interactive visualization of oceanographic data. The test case involves visualization of two and three-dimensional oceanographic data (salinity, sound speed profile, currents, temperature, and depth) with Windows NT Pentium class computers serving as both severs and client workstations.