TECHNOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

The following hardware and software environment is currently in place at the CSCA. The technological infrastructure was supported by a Canada Foundation for Innovation Grant of $345k awarded in 1999. The CSCA's infrastructure represents lead-edge database and visualization programming technologies, providing extensive opportunities to develop and evaluate visualization applications at the forefront of technological innovation.

HARDWARE

The CSCA maintains a network of Silicon Graphics Inc. workstations, with eight O2's and two Octane workstations, linked via an Onyx II server. Each SGI Octane has 512 MB of RAM and a 9GB local hard drive, while the O2's each have 384 MB of RAM and a 9GB drive. (Two of the O2 systems include cameras capable of capturing live video, along with an additional 128 MB of RAM.) The main server is an SGI Onyx II, with four, 400 MHz MIPS R12000 Processors, 2GB of RAM and a 360-gigabyte fibre-channel RAID disk array. The Onyx and the Octanes communicate using Gigabit Ethernet technology over a fibre optic channel, and all CSCA offices and labs are wired for both gigabit (fibre) and twisted-pair (100 Mbps) fast ethernet connections. The CSCA has invested $543k in developing lead-edge technological research infrastructure.

VISUALIZATION SOFTWARE

Our Research develop visualization applications primarily using the Iris Explorer Programming Language by Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) Limited and MineSet Data Mining software by Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI).

IRIS Explorer is a powerful visual programming environment for 3-D data visualization, animation and manipulation, and developing customized visualization applications. Its visual programming environment enables users to develop, prototype and build these applications quickly and easily. IRIS Esxplorer, with its broad range of visualization techniques, from simple graphs to multidimensional animation, enables users to readily discern trends and relationships in their data. Modules can be plugged together in IRIS Explorer enabling users to interactively analyze collections of data and visualize the results for analysis, presentations or publication. Each module is a software routine that users select from the large library included in IRIS Explorer. These modules facilitating the sharing of functionality between modules, and therefore multiple representation of the same underlying data.

ESRI - Maker of ArcInfo 8 and ArcView GIS

MapInfo - Maker of MapInfo Professional

Manifold - Maker of Manifold System 5.0

Oracle - Maker of Oracle 8i

Silicon Graphics Inc. ( SGI) - Maker of MineSet