This paper describes how and why a Centre of Excellence for HPC and Engineering should be established and showcases the added value for its potential users. We list the necessary elements for creating a baseline and we describe the roles the different stakeholders of such a Centre are called to play. The Centre brings together (HPC) Resource Providers, Application/Code Owners and Business specialists to support the growing amount of new engineering applications, as well as re-usage and adaptation of already available applications by new user groups. The impact on the larger European community can be summarised as: reduced costs and more high-skilled jobs. Both, a result of a smoother, more economic workflow from design and testing to manufacturing/building.

AbstractDie 3D Multimediabrille cinemizer OLED der Carl Zeiss AG, Oberkochen ermöglicht zusammen mit der Virtual Reality (VR) Software‐Technologie der Visenso GmbH, Stuttgart eine Simulation der realen 3D Wahrnehmung für innovative Anwendungen in Industrie und Freizeit. Sie reichen heute vom Engineering über das Marketing bis hin zu Aus‐ und Weiterbildung und sind inzwischen auch ultramobil verfügbar.

The development of immersive applications is demonstrated based on the COVISE software: started as a tool for the analysis of numerical simulations it has been extended to the whole field of engineering. Based on the realisation that the communication of complex three-dimensional data is not limited to the development teams of enterprises, COVISE is today also used in the field of sales and marketing. And it now finds its way into universities and schools in order to make it easier to understand three-dimensional phenomena.

In this paper we present a system architecture which will allow several users to perform cooperative scientific visualization in a heterogeneous high-performance envi-ronment. In contrast to most available visualization systems this architecture tries to find a balanced relationship between the algorithms and the data. Comparable to the Controller which controls the execution flow storage managers are introduced which control the dataflow between modules which might reside on different computers. An overview of the system architecture will be given and an inspection of the potential of this approach will be performed.

The COllaborative VIsualization and Simulation Environment (COVISE) has been designed for a distributed and collaborative scenario in a high-performance computing and networking environment. Special emphasis has been put on the handling of the data in the whole system. Its concept though is sufficiently flexible that even the (more common) scenario of desktop workstation and slower WAN-connections can benefit from the advantages of a collaborative working environment. We will give an overview of the system and its architecture, explain its advantages and present our experiences, including performance measurements.

Visualization is one of the most important activities involved in modern exploratory data analysis. Traditional database data models, in their current forms, are inadequate to satisfy the data modeling need of exploratory data analysis in general and visualization in particular. A comprehensive scientific data model is required for seamless integration of various components of a scientific database system which includes visualization, data analysis, and data management. This paper identifies the criteria of a comprehensive scientific data model and discusses the implementation aspect of such a model based on existing DBMS. Recent research in scientific data modeling and various issues raised in the workshop subgroup are also presented.

The systems integration questions really extend beyond database and visualization aspects to include external data processing services such as numerical compute engines, statistical packages, neural networks, and the like. In constructing a system, several different design dimensions must be considered, such as ease of use, performance, size of data, coupling of systems, extensibility, heterogeneity, migration paths, distribution, etc., as outlined previously. In addition, in designing systems such as dataflow or object oriented modeled systems, it may be possible to connect two different procedures, or operations over data, but it may not be meaningful to do so. Efforts aimed at improving the integration of visualization and database systems are currently underway (e.g. Sequoia 2000, Aurora from Xidak, and PAGEIN), differing in scope and design goals. We hope that heightened awareness of the needs of users with data management and visualization problems will further increase interaction between developers of database and visualization systems in the near future, to address the numerous challenges that lie ahead.

The usage of Virtual Reality in the industrial design process is far more complex than the assembly of some hardware components plus the installation of the software. The integration of the Virtual Reality application into the workflow is crucial for a successful usage of this technology. This includes especially the availability of the necessary data interfaces between the already available tools in the design process and the Virtual Reality application. VirCinity as a provider of the Virtual Reality visualisation package COVISE has gained a lot of experience in the integration of Virtual Reality into this process with emphasis on the visualisation and analysis of the results of numerical simulation. The presentation will show how the Virtual Reality application can be integrated into the working environment of a computational engineer.

This paper describes the developments performed in the EU-project VISiT (Virtual Intuitive Simulation Test bed). The goal of the project is the development of an intuitive simulation test bed based on Virtual Reality technology. As a new man-machine interface it will be an efficient environment for a small team of engineers and designers, that enables also the designer to evaluate and interact with the complex 3D data of simulations. The basis of the Virtual Intuitive Simulation Test bed will be COVISE, an extendable distributed software environment to integrate supercomputer based simulations, post-processing, and visualisation functionalities with co-operative working in a seamless manner. The project covers different application fields, including heating, ventilation and air-conditioning simulation in a passenger car compartment and the flow simulation in a draft tube and in an axial runner of a water turbine.

From the Publisher:Mainstream data mining techniques significantly limit the role of human reasoning and insight. Likewise, in data visualization, the role of computational analysis is relatively small. The power demonstrated individually by these approaches to knowledge discovery suggests that somehow uniting the two could lead to increased efficiency and more valuable results. But is this true? How might it be achieved? And what are the consequences for data-dependent enterprises? Information Visualization in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery is the first book to ask and answer these thought-provoking questions. It is also the first book to explore the fertile ground of uniting data mining and data visualization principles in a new set of knowledge discovery techniques. Leading researchers from the fields of data mining, data visualization, and statistics present findings organized around topics introduced in two recent international knowledge discovery and data mining workshops. Collected and edited by three of the area's most influential figures, these chapters introduce the concepts and components of visualization, detail current efforts to include visualization and user interaction in data mining, and explore the potential for further synthesis of data mining algorithms and data visualization techniques. This incisive, groundbreaking research is sure to wield a strong influence in subsequent efforts in both academic and corporate settings. Features Details advances made by leading researchers from the fields of data mining, data visualization, and statistics. Provides a useful introduction to the science of visualization, sketches the current role for visualization in data mining, and then takes a long look into its mostly untapped potential. Presents the findings of recent international KDD workshops as formal chapters that together comprise a complete, cohesive body of research. Offerss compelling and practical information for professionals and researchers in database technology, data mining, knowledge discovery, artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, statistics, pattern recognition, information retrieval, high-performance computing, and data visualization. Author Biography: Usama Fayyad is co-founder, president, and CEO of digiMine, a data warehousing and data mining ASP. Prior to digiMine, he founded and led Microsoft's Data Mining and Exploration Group, where he developed data mining prediction components for Microsoft Site Server and scalable algorithms for mining large databases. Georges G. Grinstein is a professor of computer science, director of the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research, and co-director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is currently the chief technologist for AnVil Informatics, a data exploration company. Andreas Wierse is the managing director of VirCinity, a spin-off company of the Computing Centre of the University of Stuttgart. Previously, he worked at the Computer Centre, where he designed and implemented distributed data management for the COVISE visualization system and maintained a wide range of graphics workstations.

Visualisierungssysteme die mit den grosen Datenmengen arbeiten, die heute bei numerischen Simulationen anfallen, mussen mit diesen Daten effizient umgehen konnen. In dieser Arbeit werden die Anforderungen untersucht, die an die Datenverwaltung eines solchen Visualisierungssystems gestellt werden, das fur die Darstellung der Ergebnisse komplexer numerischer Berechnungen notig ist. Dazu werden diese Anforderungen anhand eines heute in der Industrie ublichen Falles skizziert und auf ihre Auswirkungen bei der Visualisierung hin beleuchtet. Anschliesend werden die Systemarchitektur des Visualisierungssystems COVISE sowie die es direkt beeinflussenden Systeme kurz vorgestellt. COVISE dient als Prototyp, innerhalb dessen die meisten der in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten Konzepte realisiert sind. Anschliesend werden einige verbreitete Visualisierungssysteme anhand der anfangs festgestellten Anforderungen auf ihre Datenverwaltung hin analysiert und dem in COVISE realisierten Konzept gegenubergestellt. Im darauffolgenden Kapitel werden diese Konzepte ausfuhrlich vorgestellt. Die verteilte Datenverwaltung steht dabei im Mittelpunkt: es wird beschrieben, wie der Datenaustausch zwischen den Modulen realisiert ist, sowohl im lokalen Fall, als auch im Fall einer verteilten Anwendung. Die Vorteile dieses Ansatzes und die notigen Mechanismen um einen eindeutigen Datenzugriff in einem verteilten System sicherstellen zu konnen werden dargelegt. Den Datenobjekten kommt in diesem Zusammenhang eine Schlusselrolle zu. Die fur die Handhabung der Berechnungs- und Geometriedaten wichtigen Strukturen werden entwickelt und die passenden Hierarchien dargestellt. Im Hinblick auf die Nutzung dieser Datenobjekte durch die Module werden die Handhabung der Datenobjekte und die Zugriffsmechanismen beschrieben. Dabei werden auch die Moglichkeiten diskutiert, Datenobjekte persistent zu gestalten oder zu partitionieren. Visualisation systems that work on large amounts of data, as the ones produced by numerical simulations, must deal with this data efficiently. In this thesis the requirements will be examined that the data management of such a visualisation system must fulfill in order to perform the visualisation of the results of complex numerical simulations. These requirements are assessed for a standard application case of todays industry and will then be viewed under the aspect of their effect on the visualisation. Next the system architecture of the COVISE visualisation system and the systems that influenced its development will be presented. COVISE serves as a prototype that is used to implement most of the concepts presented in this work. In addition several widely used visualisation systems will be analysed according to the initially defined requirements for the data management. This will be compared to the concept that has been realised in COVISE. These concepts will be presented in detail in the following chapter. Here the focus is on the distributed data management: it is described how the data exchange between the modules is realised, for the local case as well as for a distributed scenario. The advantages of this approach will be explained as well as the necessary mechanisms to assure an unambiguous data access in a distributed system. In this context the data objects play a key role. The structures that are important for the management of the computational and geometrical data are developed and the corresponding hierarchies are shown. With regard to the use of these data objects through the modules the handling and the access mechanisms are described. Here also possibilities are discussed to make data objects persistent or to partition them.

Virtual Reality (VR) in conjunction with Immersive Projection Technology (IPT) are well introduced and highly accepted in the international society of institutional research. But does the (manufacturing) industry share this excitement about recent stereo projection technology? What are the key factors of successfully creating a VR solution with production quality? How to identify fields of application and how to get return on invest? These questions will be addressed especially for the automotive industry. While some of the considerations hold for other manufacturing industries as well, some do not. Problems and solutions will be discussed on sample installations and applications for the automotive industry. These VR systems help engineers to deal with different problems: • evaluation of exterior car design, • analysis of thermal comfort in a car cabin, • visualization of a production line • acceptance of tools for deep drawing We will outline the different projection and software technologies used for these engineering tasks as well as the user interface aspects, because there is a special correlation between used projection technology and useful user interaction. The careful design of a special purpose 3D user interface is one of the keys for user productivity and user acceptance.