SAGENext: the next generation of SAGE

The NSF-funded OptIPuter project (Optical networking, Internet Protocol, computer storage, processing and visualization technologies) where distributed computational resources are tightly coupled over high-speed optical network is envisioned by a team of researchers at Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and Calit2, University of California, San Diego 10 years ago (Smarr, '03). The goal of the OptIPuter project is to deliver an architecture where terabytes and petabytes of distributed data generated by e-Science applications can be easily accessed over the optical networks called LambdaGrid in order for scientists to visualize, interact, and analyze their data. The tiled-display wall system called LambdaVision and graphics middleware called Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE) (Jeong, '10) that drives the LambdaVision that is located at users’ end are the outcomes of the OptIPuter project. Essentially, the OptIPuter project’s model where users access remotely distributed resources over network is an early instantiation of today’s growing Cloud computing model. More details about SAGE can be found at sagecommons.org

Today, the emergence of multi-headed graphic technologies and the rapid growth of high-resolution displays empower a single computer to drive a large-scale display wall, in many cases eliminating the need for a computer cluster, which significantly reduces the cost of ownership and maintenance of these environments. Thus, we developed the next generation of SAGE called SAGENext to utilize modern hardware that will make the deployment of display wall environment easier to more users.

SAGENext is a networked visualization framework for large scale display wall environment driven by a single machine. The goal of SAGENext is to enable users access, share, and interact with data-intensive applications by bringing their visualizations on collaborative display wall environments.