December 1998

There are numerous highlights in this quarter's status report. For instance, a series of Scientific Animations, at the Subsurface Modeling site (http://king.ticam.utexas.edu/CCV/gallery/movies/movies.html) is now available. Also, the Virtual Museum site has added new 3-D animations (http://www.ctlab.geo.utexas.edu/imfoframes/imfoani.html). The Reservoir Simulation Site illustrates the current cluster setup and contains information related to performance tests with those clusters. Within this report there is also a link to the Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Intel Cluster Homepage (http://topeka.cpge.utexas.edu/). One of the most complete websites is that of the Multimedia Delivery Systems Project (Harrick Vin, PI). This site lists in detail associated projects, related funding, and publications that have been generated from these projects.

We have updated the current Website as of 12/15/98. Many projects (Vin, Wheeler, Wilcox, Bovik, Tasch, Edgar, Pinkston, Kappelman, and de Veciana) have been able to leverage additional funding due to the Intel grant. Also, it appears that most PIs have or will have information that can be conveyed in a video format. Hopefully, we will be able to create an additional page at our Intel grant site that uses video to highlight some of the projects. We are considering the possible addition to the Website of information related to the cross-institutional interactions that are occurring (e.g., Carey with Dutton at Stanford U. and with Bose at U. of Michigan). We are also examining potential collaborations here at UT (e.g., Rowe, Kappelman, and Bajaj; Wheeler, Carey, and Sepehrnoori).

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April 1999

At our Intel site (http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/) we have added a short movie which utilizes HREF Tracking and audio narration highlighting the following projects:

• Digital Video Telecommunications Research and Teaching (Dr. Alan Bovik, Electrical and Computer Engineering)
• Virtual Museum Project (Dr. Timothy Rowe, Geology)
• Virtual Laboratories and Examinations (Dr. John Kappelman, Anthropology)

URL for the Video Highlights: http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/movie/index.html

There is also another addition to the site - a page devoted to funding and relationships that have been spawned by the Intel resources. This information is available at the following URL: http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/othergrants.html

The latest status report illustrates how aggressively the Intel machines have been incorporated into the research process. For instance, within the Reservoir Simulation (PI: Sepehrnoori) site there is a report entitled Parallel Compositional Reservoir Simulation on a Cluster of PCs. The report is available at http://topeka.cpge.utexas.edu/papers/Cluster/Cluster.html.

The PI for the Real-Time Process Control project (PI: Edgar) recently gave an invited paper at a National Academies Workshop on Computing and Communications Technology in Chemical Science and Technology. The title of the paper was "Vision 2020: Computational Needs of the Chemical Industry" (pdf version - http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/Process_Design.pdf). There are also two PCs installed for two real-time control projects using Fisher-Rosemount Delta-V software
(see progress report at http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/statrepsApr99.html#A4).

A list of recent papers related to the Distributed Visualization project (PI: Bajaj) is available at http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/statrepsApr99.html#D6. Their current status report at the same location includes images for Sub-project A (peer-to-peer collaborative visualization on the multimedia desktop) and Sub-project B (multi-pipe, multi-projector distributed visualization on a panoramic power wall).

The Multimedia Navigation Systems project (PI: Pinkston) describes Automation and Control Systems for Theater, with a link to a related summary called - Using MIDI to Control Stage Machinery and Motorized Theatrical Effects (URL: http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~fritzs/CasaMidi.htm).

The Wireless & High Performance Telecommunication Networks project (PI: de Veciana) has ongoing research in the following four areas: development of SMAQ, a web-based tool for statistical traffic matching and performance analysis of queues; stability, Performance and Scalability of Traffic Routing for Communication Networks; vector Channel Propagation Study for Wireless Communications; an investigation of RF High Power Amplifier Linearization.
(For more info see: http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/statrepsApr99.html#A6).
In addition, this project has support from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and Southwestern Bell among others (http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/othergrants.html#A6).

The Internet City (PI: Maidment) site has recently added a link to the Center for Research in Water Resources (http://www.crwr.utexas.edu/). They are working with the city of Austin to serve some of the data on our ftp site as well as work with Texas Natural Resource and Conservation Commission (TNRCC) and the LCRA on web mapping projects.

The Enterprise Systems Management project (PI Leibrock) included a link to a high school collaboration project called AMIGOS (http://amigos.bus.utexas.edu/) in their latest status report.

Computational Finance (PI: Patrick Jaillet) also reports two new collaborative efforts, one with Algorithmics and one with SciComp. See http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/othergrants.html#E1 for more information.

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August 1999

Highlights from ten selected projects funded under the Intel Technology for Education 2000 Grant are given below:

• Multimedia Delivery Systems (Vin) - The PI for this project has leveraged the Intel equipment to include funding associated with the LARIAT project (Dell Computer Corporation) with two grants totaling $50,000 (http://www.utexas.edu/computer/grants/lariat/2nd_quarter.htm)

• Multimedia Navigation Systems (Pinkston) - The University of Alberta Minimum Reality Toolkit (MRTK) was installed and configured on both SGI Onyx and Intel Pentium/NT systems. Over the past six months, the Vocal Arts Lab at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Arts (CASA) continued working on a web site devoted to the teaching of voice to beginning students. The PI and associated staff have also procured additional funding as a result of the Intel grant. Professor Pinkston has a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition for 1999-2000, which will be devoted primarily to the creation a new VR work on the CASA VR system. Microsoft has donated $60,000 to CASA to support faculty research through a program called "CASAbatical." This year, the program will provide one semester leaves to professors Schwentker and Wiley, who will pursue research related to their Intel D5 projects at CASA.

• Computational Fluid Dynamics and HPC (Carey) - During the past six months work in the CFD Lab on the cluster research project has continued in two main areas: 1) the solution of coupled viscous flow and heat transfer problems including surface tension effects; 2) the numerical modeling of patterns in chemically reacting systems. The work has involved both performance studies and phenomenological investigations in both cases. In the coupled flow and transport problem we have been investigating the effects of thermocapillary surface tension in a low gravity environment and have carried out performance studies to investigate scaling as the number of processors increases. Results of the scaling studies are indicated in one of the web figures provided. In the case of the pattern studies, we have been investigating the structures of the solutions to nonlinear coupled reactive transport problems and carrying out comparisons with experimental studies performed by Harry Swinney and his associates in the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics. In this case we made parallel simulations on high resolution grids to explore both organized and labyrinthine pattern formations. A sample pattern is also provided. (see: http://www.cfdlab.ae.utexas.edu/intel_beowulf)

• Deep Submicron Process and Device Modeling and Analysis (Tasch) - Two associated projects have been completed under this grant. Rigorous, physically-based damage models for Ge and In implants into Si have been developed. Also, testing has commenced on TOMCAT, a new physically based Monte Carlo ion implantation simulator which is capable of simulating 2-D implants into arbitrary topography with multiple layers, both crystalline and amorphous

• Reservoir Simulation (Sepehrnoori) - We have recently begun a comparison study of cluster networking performance using a variety of available technologies. We will be comparing the performance of 100 Mbps Ethernet, Myrinet and Scali. Our goal is to determine how significant of an effect the use of higher bandwidth, lower latency networking has on real-world reservoir simulation problems, and whether they are worth the additional expense. Initial experiments with Myrinet suggest that it significantly improves the parallel performance past 16 processors; see http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/statrepsAug99.html#A3

• Real-Time Process Control (Edgar) - A recent emphasis has been to minimize the computational effort of reconciling dynamic measurements from chemical processes while making the results more reliable and faster using nonlinear programming, commercial simulators such as HYSYS, and parallel computing. The PI for this project has recently presented the following two endowed lectures: "Process Engineering in the 21st Century: The Impact of Information Technology," Phillips Lecture, Department of Chemical Engineering, Oklahoma State University (http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/edgar/okstate.pdf) "Information Technology and Chemical Engineering Education: Evolution or Revolution?", Chemical Academy Lecture, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/edgar/Missouri_july19-99.pdf)

• Subsurface Modeling (Wheeler) - Application of Parssim, a flow and reactive transport simulator that was ported to the cluster in the past year, has focused on a study of diagenesis. Recently the strong coupling between cementation (conversion of the originally deposited aragonite into calcite) and permeability (the capacity of the porous medium for fluid flow) has been included in the model. Simulations for the coupled model agree with the petrographical characterization of examples of this depositional environment. This brings closer the exciting possibility of predicting reservoir quality in advance of drilling and production.

• Computational Finance Lab (Jaillet) - Two new research projects have been started in the past two months on the pricing and hedging of derivatives in the presence of jumps, and on an equilibrium model for capital structure.

• Electronic Commerce Networks (Whinston) -We have been working on prototyping a traffic pricing system for the virtual private network (VPN) since last year. Based on a VPN testbed constructed with the computers donated by Intel a pilot VPN traffic pricing system named VTPE has been developed. The prototype operates on a scalable VPN and with reconfigurable parameters in accordance with experimentation needs. Its traffic pricing kernel system provide flexibility to allow testing different network resource scheduling techniques, such as round robin, and pricing strategies on a real-time basis. Its experimental user interface allows configuring the system easily and is able to dynamically display observations in curves. Right now, experiments have turned out many valuable results in the effectiveness of traffic pricing under different conditions, which are helpful for us to find the optimal pricing strategy and policies.

• Enterprise Systems Management (Larry Leibrock) - The Business School/Dell Spring Summer internship involved 12 MBA studentsworking with Microsoft Solutions Framework in planning for Microsoft 2000. Detailed reports, statements of work were completed and the project was a success for both UT-Business School and Dell. The project is now complete. We have now moved to Windows 2000 RC1 and are planning a Q1 deployment on 4 - 8 way SMP servers.

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December 1999

Highlights from eight selected projects funded under the Intel Technology for Education 2000 Grant are given below:

• Virtual Museums (Rowe) - In the last six months we have worked on CT scanning important specimens from some of the world's finest natural history museums. These include an egg containing an embryo of the extinct elephant bird of Madagascar from the National Geographic Society, several Mesozoic dinosaurs and primitive mammal fossils from Asia, and several modern lizards and mammals. We have also been image-processing some of these and other datasets for both research and for the Web. We mounted several new datasets on our Digital Morphology Group Web site, a site designed to serve 3-D data volumes for natural history specimens. We have also tested new VRML software and imaging boards for manipulating 3-D datasets, and we are in the process of updating our CT Lab Web site to demonstrate the new visualization capability that this offers us. We have trained 15 students in 3-D image processing and visualization techniques using CT datasets from natural history museum collections. We have begun to incorporate 2-D and 3-D imagery into our natural history collections database. Based on the technology that we have mastered to date, we submitted a $1.6 MM grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health to incorporate important research laboratory species like the mouse and rat into our growing digital library. We also received a $500,000 grant from NSF to develop a digital library of vertebrate morphology.

• Distributed Visualization (Bajaj) - Two clusters of six machines are intended for two experiments in distributed visualization. (1) Peer-to-peer collaborative visualization on the multimedia desktop . Our current collaboration architecture defines an extensible environment for developing collaborative visualization applications that support large scale geographically dispersed interaction among multiple participants and systems. The architecture is connectionless, scalable, supports multi-group federation, has an adaptable data location model, supports flexible applications coupling, multiple coordination strategies, dynamic downloading of executable code and is event driven. Interoperable implementations exist in C, C++. and Java. (2) Multi-pipe, multi-projector distributed visualization on a panoramic power wall. The cluster of Intel machines shall be connected using a high speed switch (fast, low latency). Three of the machines shall initially serve as display or graphics servers and drive a set up of three electrohome projectors in a rear projection panoramic power wall. The research challenges include dynamic resolutions visualization with guaranteed display frame rates, scalability across diverse network bandwith, disk transfer rates and inter-processor communication latency.

• Electronic Commerce Networks (Whinston) - Previous research on virtual private network (VPN) traffic pricing has worked out an optimum traffic pricing model for the VPN with round-robin bandwidth scheduling. The model has been tested with a network-based experiment system called VTPES (VPN Traffic Pricing Experiment System). The research in the next phase will be focused on digital contracting for VPN bandwidth market. There are four types of players in an Internet-based VPN: Internet backbone providers, ISPs, VPN administrators and VPN users. They form three intermediate network bandwidth service markets: (1) the interconnection market between backbone providers, (2) the market in which backbone providers sell Internet access to the ISPs, and (3) the market in which the ISPs provide VPN service to VPN administrators. This multi-level market structure complicates VPN traffic pricing. The proposed research focuses on VPN bandwidth optimal resource allocation and optimal traffic pricing.

• Multimedia Delivery Systems (Vin) - Emerging distributed multimedia applications require the networks and operating systems to export a much richer class of services than that offered by the current best-effort Internet. The concept of service differentiation---differentiating among the services provided by a network to different customers and applications---is at the core of designing next-generation Internet. Although there has been considerable amount of discussion on the network architectures for providing service differentiation, very little is known about how these architectures can be instantiated and how effective they are at providing service differentiation. Over the past few months, we have initiated a project (1) to evaluate existing architectures for providing service differentiation and to identify their limitations; (2) to develop novel techniques for addressing these limitations; and (3) to instantiate these novel techniques in a programmable network testbed.

• Computational Fluid Dynamics (Carey) - Over the course of the past six months, work on the Beowulf cluster research in the CFDLab has progressed in three main areas: (1) the solution of coupled viscous flow and heat transfer problems including surface tension effects, (2) the simulation of sub-surface transport of a dilute chemical contaminant, and (3) the numerical modeling of pattern formation and evolution in chemically reacting systems. The work has involved both performance studies and phenomenological investigations of these problems. We have continued to investigate the effects of thermocapillary surface tension in a low gravity environment, and we have added the effects of a deformable free surface. We have also begun extending the coupled flow and viscous transport code to unstructured hexahedral grids. This code has also been used to do preliminary simulations of dilute contaminant transport in porous media. The latest results of the performance and application studies are available on the CFDLab website. We are currently performing statistical studies of joint failure in geomechanical problems on the cluster. We anticipate results in time for the next report.

• Digital Video Communications (Bovik) - We have further developed our innovative approach for achieving high quality, low bitrate video communication over computer networks and over wireless communications channels: foveated video compression. In this strategy, digital video is resampled at a nonuniform spatial density, reflecting the human eye's own foveated retinal sampling. In this way, video/image compression is multiplied by factors of 5-10. We have successfully implemented such an algorithm on H.263/ MPEG-I / MPEG-II standard-compliant video streams. Several demonstrations of the foveated compressed video algorithm can be seen at http://pineapple.ece.utexas.edu/class/Video/demo.html, for both H.263 and MPEG-II.

• Subsurface Modeling (Wheeler) - Application of Parssim, a flow and reactive transport simulator, has focused on a study of heirarchies of uncertainty in geological models. Tracer transport simulations clearly showed the importance of a trend in rock permeability with depth in determining large-scale flow behavior, despite the fact that this trend constituted only a small part of the overall variability of permeability in the formation. The PC cluster made feasible simulations on large 3D realizations of the geological models; previous studies were limited to 2D. Simulations of highly coupled reactive flow in these media revealed intriguing evolution patterns; remarkably few dissolution channels were initiated, and competition between these soon left a single dominant channel. Evaluation of run performance for this class of problems has led to a new research project, in which the flow calculation will be run on a platform tailored for linear algebra operations while the CPU-intensive transport calculations are run on a different platform. Visualizations of these simulations were featured at SuperComputing '99. Development of the IPARS new generation framework for parallel reservoir simulation on the original 16-node cluster has shown very encouraging scaling on CSM's new 64-node PC cluster, with 93% of optimal speedup achieved.

• Wireless/High Performance Telecommunications Networks (de Veciana) - The project has made significant inroads on various problems in the high-speed and wireless communications arena. Specifically contributions were made in modeling and approximate simulation joint bandwidth sharing and routing on large-scale communication networks. This work is pertinent to answering large-scale resource allocation question for networks such as the Internet. Our research on spatial diversity multiple access techniques for wireless systems has focused on the use of computational electromagnetics techniques. The aim of this work was to experimentally assess and simulate SDMA vector channel models with a view on estimating high-level system performance. Additional results on the design of pth order predistorters to overcome nonlinearities typical in satellite communication systems suggest new approaches to the design of such systems.

(For more info visit the Intel Status Report Website at: http://www.utexas.edu/computer/itc/intel/statrepsDec99.html)

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