Sun Visualization System
Encyclopedia
Sun Visualization System was a sharable visualization solution introduced by Sun Microsystems
in January of 2007. It used other Sun technologies, including Sun servers, Solaris, Sun Ray
Ultra-Thin Clients, and Sun Grid Engine
. The Sun Visualization System software stack was based on several key open source
technologies: Chromium to perform distributed 3D rendering, VirtualGL
to re-route 3D rendering jobs to arbitrary graphics devices, and TurboVNC to deliver the rendered 3D images to a client or clients. Sun sponsored and/or contributed changes back to these projects throughout the life of the Sun Visualization System.
In January of 2009, The VirtualGL Project reported that it was no longer being sponsored by Sun Microsystems, and in April of 2009, Sun announced that it was discontinuing the Sun Shared Visualization and Sun Scalable Visualization products. Customers will be able to order the products through July 31, 2009, and service and support will be provided until Oct. 2, 2014.
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
in January of 2007. It used other Sun technologies, including Sun servers, Solaris, Sun Ray
Sun Ray
The Sun Ray from Oracle is a stateless thin client solution aimed at corporate environments, originally introduced by Sun Microsystems in September 1999...
Ultra-Thin Clients, and Sun Grid Engine
Sun Grid Engine
Oracle Grid Engine, previously known as Sun Grid Engine , previously known as CODINE or GRD , is an open source batch-queuing system, developed and supported by Sun Microsystems...
. The Sun Visualization System software stack was based on several key open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
technologies: Chromium to perform distributed 3D rendering, VirtualGL
VirtualGL
VirtualGL is an open source program which redirects the 3D rendering commands from Unix and Linux OpenGL applications to 3D accelerator hardware in a dedicated server and displays the rendered output interactively to a thin client located elsewhere on the network.- The problem :Normally, VNC and...
to re-route 3D rendering jobs to arbitrary graphics devices, and TurboVNC to deliver the rendered 3D images to a client or clients. Sun sponsored and/or contributed changes back to these projects throughout the life of the Sun Visualization System.
In January of 2009, The VirtualGL Project reported that it was no longer being sponsored by Sun Microsystems, and in April of 2009, Sun announced that it was discontinuing the Sun Shared Visualization and Sun Scalable Visualization products. Customers will be able to order the products through July 31, 2009, and service and support will be provided until Oct. 2, 2014.
Main hardware components
- Sun FireSun FireThe Sun Fire server brand is a series of server computers introduced in 2001 by Sun Microsystems . The Sun Fire branding coincided with the introduction of the UltraSPARC III processor, superseding the UltraSPARC II-based Sun Enterprise series...
servers - Sun Ultra workstations
- Graphics Accelerators: Sun XVR-2500, NVIDIA QuadroNVIDIA QuadroThe Nvidia Quadro series of AGP, PCI, and PCI Express graphics cards comes from the NVIDIA Corporation. Their designers aimed to accelerate CAD and DCC , and the cards are usually featured in workstations....
FX, or NVIDIA Quadro PlexNVIDIA Quadro PlexThe Nvidia Quadro Plex is an external graphics processing unit designed for large-scale 3D visualizations. The system consists of a box containing a pair of high-end Nvidia Quadro graphics cards featuring a variety of external video connectors...
VCS
Software stack
- The Sun Shared Visualization software consisted of VirtualGL, TurboVNC, a proprietary plugin to allow VirtualGL to send images directly to Sun Ray clients, and glueware to allow remote 3D rendering jobs to be managed by Sun GridEngine.
- The Sun Scalable Visualization software contained customized versions of Chromium, OpenSceneGraph, ParaViewParaViewParaView is an open source, freely available program for parallel, interactive, scientific visualization. It has a client–server architecture to facilitate remote visualization of datasets, and generates level of detail models to maintain interactive framerates for large datasets. It is an...
, and MPIMessage Passing InterfaceMessage Passing Interface is a standardized and portable message-passing system designed by a group of researchers from academia and industry to function on a wide variety of parallel computers...
. It also contained glueware to allow distributed 3D rendering jobs to be managed by Sun GridEngine.