University of Texas increases visualization capacity
March 16, 2009
The Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin has installed NVIDIA Quadro FX professional graphics solutions on 25 Linux workstations.
Offshore staff
AUSTIN, Texas -- The Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin has installed NVIDIA Quadro FX professional graphics solutions on 25 Linux workstations. The configurations include Quadro FX 5500 and 5600 high end visualization cards, with several quad-graphics systems using Quadro FX 4500 X2s. The Bureau's staff of 75 researchers is engaged in a wide range of activities, from developing better petroleum mapping techniques to searching for ways to combat global climate change.
"NVIDIA Quadro has allowed us to push the boundary of visualization. Just a few years ago we were limited to two to four GB data sets," says Dallas Dunlap, a geologist with the Bureau's Quantitative Clastics Laboratory. "Now we're looking at 100 GB mega-merged surveys in 3D. In our offshore research, we can now view sediment from source to sink, and see the data all in one regional view. The high-end GPUs are critical to the task."
The Bureau's Quantitative Clastics researchers now can load massive blocks of seismic data, such as the viewing and manipulation of 20,000 sq km (7,722 sq mi) required by one recent study. GPU computing allows researchers to isolate channels where sand is moving and view them from different angles in real time to show how the sea floor is changing.
