Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Computer Graphics”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,711 records · Page 95
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2013

Efficient Scheduling of Recursive Control Flow on GPUs

Graphics processing units (GPUs) have rapidly emerged as a very significant player in high performance computing. Single instruction multiple thread (SIMT) pipelines are typically used in GPUs to exploit parallelism and maximize performance. Although support for unstructured control flow has been included in GPUs, efficiently managing thread divergence for arbitrary parallel programs remains a critical challenge. In this paper, we focus on the problem of supporting recursion in modern GPUs. We design and comparatively evaluate various algorithms to manage thread divergence encountered in recursive programs. The results improve upon traditional post-dominator based reconvergence mechanisms designed to handle thread divergence due to control flow within a procedure.

GPUs↗
DOE OSTI2020

Collaborative Research: Improved Efficiency and Coupling of the Radiation Code in the ACME Earth System Model. Final Report

This final report details all work performed on the project by both project partners. This project provided support to properly couple RTE+RRTMGP, a high-performance broadband radiation code, within DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). RTE+RRTMGP is a successor to the RRTMG radiation code, which has been widely accepted for its speed and accuracy by the global modeling community, and has been in use in the NCAR CESM for many years and was implemented in the initial version of E3SM. However, the computational cost of RRTMG remains high relative to other components in part due to its complexity and to its inefficient use of modern optimization strategies, issues that were rectified by the development of RTE+RRTMGP. Many of the accomplishment in this project necessitated significant collaboration with the E3SM development team. One focus of the project was to enhance the code’s optimization on the limited number of emerging computing systems on which the model is expected be used, including Many Integrated Core (MIC) architectures and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) hardware. We also developed additional capabilities for RTE+RRTMGP that E3SM scientists identified as important for the planned applications of the model. The result of our project was optimization of a key physical component (radiative transfer calculations) of E3SM, directly supporting E3SM’s overarching global modeling objectives. More broadly, this project provided overall advancements in the use of radiative transfer calculations in atmospheric modeling and simulation, particularly for climate.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1982

High speed computerized data acquisition of photovoltaic V-I characteristics

The voltage current (V-I) characteristics of the photovoltaic array were studied under actual environmental conditions. A method of data acquisition was devised that uses a capacitor charge technique to obtain the V-I characteristic and a computerized data system to display, record and process the data. The capacitor charge technique uses an array shorting transistor and a capacitor bank to sweep the array operating voltage and current from short circuit to open circuit in a specified time (approximately 125 ms). The computerized data system is synchronized with this transition and repetitively samples the array voltage and current during the transition and records the ambient conditions. This data is then normalized by the computer to standard conditions (100 mW/sq cm, 28 C) and is available in tabular and graphic form for both the voltage current and voltage power characteristics. The capacitor charge technique is described.

Delombard, R.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Systems integration for the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Robotics Applications Development Laboratory (RADL)

A laboratory for developing robotics technology for hazardous and repetitive Shuttle and payload processing activities is discussed. An overview of the computer hardware and software responsible for integrating the laboratory systems is given. The center's anthropomorphic robot is placed on a track allowing it to be moved to different stations. Various aspects of the laboratory equipment are described, including industrial robot arm control, smart systems integration, the supervisory computer, programmable process controller, real-time tracking controller, image processing hardware, and control display graphics. Topics of research include: automated loading and unloading of hypergolics for space vehicles and payloads; the use of mobile robotics for security, fire fighting, and hazardous spill operations; nondestructive testing for SRB joint and seal verification; Shuttle Orbiter radiator damage inspection; and Orbiter contour measurements. The possibility of expanding the laboratory in the future is examined.

Davis, V. Leon↗
NASA NTRS1991

A general multiblock Euler code for propulsion integration. Volume 2: User guide for BCON, pre-processor for grid generation and GMBE

The BCON is a menu-driven graphics interface program whose input consists of strings or arrays of points generated from a computer aided design (CAD) tool or any other surface geometry source. The user needs to design the block topology and prepare the surface geometry definition and surface grids separately. The BCON generates input files that contain the block definitions and the block relationships required for generating a multiblock volume grid with the EAGLE grid generation package. The BCON also generates the block boundary conditions file which is used along with the block relationship file as input for the general multiblock Euler (GMBE) code (GMBE, volumes 1 and 3).

Su, T. Y.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Panel Library And Editor

Panel Library and Editor computer program is grapical-user-interface builder program for use on workstations of Silicon Graphics IRIS family. Program creates "widgets" manipulated by user. Appearance similar to X-Windows System. Used by programmers to write user-friendly mouse-driven application programs for IRIS workstations. Panel Library (v9.8) and Editor (v1.1) written in C Language and Scheme.

Raible, Eric↗
NASA NTRS1993

High resolution image processing on low-cost microcomputers

Recent advances in microcomputer technology have resulted in systems that rival the speed, storage, and display capabilities of traditionally larger machines. Low-cost microcomputers can provide a powerful environment for image processing. A new software program which offers sophisticated image display and analysis on IBM-based systems is presented. Designed specifically for a microcomputer, this program provides a wide-range of functions normally found only on dedicated graphics systems, and therefore can provide most students, universities and research groups with an affordable computer platform for processing digital images. The processing of AVHRR images within this environment is presented as an example.

Miller, R. L.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Program Simulates Spacecraft Communication Scenarios

Dynamic Environment Communications Alalysis Testbed (DECAT) computer program is modular simulation program. Computes effects of motion, antenna radiation patterns, noise, interference, and other phenomena. Flexibility enables users to analyze many communications scenarios quickly and easily, eliminating need for users to create specific computer programs. Users create simulations involving any number of vehicles, receivers, transmitters, and antennas via graphical user interface (GUI). DECAT GUI implemented by use of software tool called "Transportable Applications Environment Plus" (TAE Plus). Written in C language. Graphical user interface requires TAE Plus, Version 5.1 package available from COSMIC (GSC-13463).

Land, Kenneth P.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Evaluation of the efficiency and fault density of software generated by code generators

Flight computers and flight software are used for GN&C (guidance, navigation, and control), engine controllers, and avionics during missions. The software development requires the generation of a considerable amount of code. The engineers who generate the code make mistakes and the generation of a large body of code with high reliability requires considerable time. Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools are available which generates code automatically with inputs through graphical interfaces. These tools are referred to as code generators. In theory, code generators could write highly reliable code quickly and inexpensively. The various code generators offer different levels of reliability checking. Some check only the finished product while some allow checking of individual modules and combined sets of modules as well. Considering NASA's requirement for reliability, an in house manually generated code is needed. Furthermore, automatically generated code is reputed to be as efficient as the best manually generated code when executed. In house verification is warranted.

Schreur, Barbara↗
NASA NTRS1993

Methodology for CFD Design Analysis of National Launch System Nozzle Manifold

The current design environment dictates that high technology CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis produce quality results in a timely manner if it is to be integrated into the design process. The design methodology outlined describes the CFD analysis of an NLS (National Launch System) nozzle film cooling manifold. The objective of the analysis was to obtain a qualitative estimate for the flow distribution within the manifold. A complex, 3D, multiple zone, structured grid was generated from a 3D CAD file of the geometry. A Euler solution was computed with a fully implicit compressible flow solver. Post processing consisted of full 3D color graphics and mass averaged performance. The result was a qualitative CFD solution that provided the design team with relevant information concerning the flow distribution in and performance characteristics of the film cooling manifold within an effective time frame. Also, this design methodology was the foundation for a quick turnaround CFD analysis of the next iteration in the manifold design.

Haire, Scot L.↗
NASA NTRS1996

LTCP 2D Graphical User Interface. Application Description and User's Guide

A graphical user interface (GUI) written for NASA's LTCP (Liquid Thrust Chamber Performance) 2 dimensional computational fluid dynamic code is described. The GUI is written in C++ for a desktop personal computer running under a Microsoft Windows operating environment. Through the use of common and familiar dialog boxes, features, and tools, the user can easily and quickly create and modify input files for the LTCP code. In addition, old input files used with the LTCP code can be opened and modified using the GUI. The application is written in C++ for a desktop personal computer running under a Microsoft Windows operating environment. The program and its capabilities are presented, followed by a detailed description of each menu selection and the method of creating an input file for LTCP. A cross reference is included to help experienced users quickly find the variables which commonly need changes. Finally, the system requirements and installation instructions are provided.

Ball, Robert↗
NASA NTRS2007

An Automated Flying-Insect Detection System

An automated flying-insect detection system (AFIDS) was developed as a proof-of-concept instrument for real-time detection and identification of flying insects. This type of system has use in public health and homeland-security decision support, agriculture and military pest management, and/or entomological research. Insects are first lured into the AFIDS integrated sphere by insect attractants. Once inside the sphere, the insect s wing beats cause alterations in light intensity that is detected by a photoelectric sensor. Following detection, the insects are encouraged (with the use of a small fan) to move out of the sphere and into a designated insect trap where they are held for taxonomic identification or serological testing. The acquired electronic wing-beat signatures are preprocessed (Fourier transformed) in real time to display a periodic signal. These signals are sent to the end user where they are graphically. All AFIDS data are preprocessed in the field with the use of a laptop computer equipped with LabVIEW. The AFIDS software can be programmed to run continuously or at specific time intervals when insects are prevalent. A special DC-restored transimpedance amplifier reduces the contributions of low-frequency background light signals, and affords approximately two orders of magnitude greater AC gain than conventional amplifiers. This greatly increases the signal-to-noise ratio and enables the detection of small changes in light intensity. The AFIDS light source consists of high-intensity Al-GaInP light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The AFIDS circuitry minimizes brightness fluctuations in the LEDs and when integrated with an integrating sphere, creates a diffuse uniform light field. The insect wing beats isotropically scatter the diffuse light in the sphere and create wing-beat signatures that are detected by the sensor. This configuration minimizes variations in signal associated with insect flight orientation. Preliminary data indicate that AFIDS has sufficient sensitivity and frequency measuring capability to differentiate between male and female mosquitoes (Figure 1, bottom panel) and fruit flies (data not shown). Similar studies show that AFIDS can be utilized to detect discrete differences between two mosquito species, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. When fully deployable, a wireless network of AFIDS monitors could be used in combination with other remotely sensed data and visually displayed in a geographic information system (GIS) to provide real-time surveillance (see Figure 2). More accurate and sensitive insect population forecasts and effective rapid response and mitigation of insect issues would then be possible.

Vann, Timi↗
NASA NTRS2005

Solar-System Ephemeris Toolbox

NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) generates planetary and lunar ephemeris data and FORTRAN routines that allow users to obtain state data for the Sun, the moon, and the planets. The JPL Solar System Ephemeris Toolbox, developed at Kennedy Space Center, is a set of functions that provides the same functionality in the MATLAB computing environment along with some additional capabilities. The toolbox can be used interactively via a graphical user interface (GUI), or individual functions can be called from the MATLAB command prompt or other MATLAB scripts and functions. The toolbox also includes utility functions to define and perform coordinate transformation (e.g., mean-of-date, true-of-date, J2000) that are common in the use of these ephemerides. An attached README file guides the user through the process of constructing binary ephemeris files, verifying correct installation, and using functions to extract state data. This process also can be performed using the GUI. Help from each toolbox function is available through MATLAB s "help" function. Many of the functions in the toolbox are MATLAB equivalents of the JPL-written FORTRAN programs and subroutines used for the same purposes. A novice can use the GUI to extract state data, while a more experienced user can use the functions directly, as needed, in his/her applications. The toolbox has been tested using MATLAB Releases 13 an

Walker, Charles F.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Analyzing Spacecraft Telecommunication Systems

Multi-Mission Telecom Analysis Tool (MMTAT) is a C-language computer program for analyzing proposed spacecraft telecommunication systems. MMTAT utilizes parameterized input and computational models that can be run on standard desktop computers to perform fast and accurate analyses of telecommunication links. MMTAT is easy to use and can easily be integrated with other software applications and run as part of almost any computational simulation. It is distributed as either a stand-alone application program with a graphical user interface or a linkable library with a well-defined set of application programming interface (API) calls. As a stand-alone program, MMTAT provides both textual and graphical output. The graphs make it possible to understand, quickly and easily, how telecommunication performance varies with variations in input parameters. A delimited text file that can be read by any spreadsheet program is generated at the end of each run. The API in the linkable-library form of MMTAT enables the user to control simulation software and to change parameters during a simulation run. Results can be retrieved either at the end of a run or by use of a function call at any time step.

Kordon, Mark↗
DOE OSTI2019

GPU Usage in ATLAS Reconstruction and Analysis

With Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) and other kinds of accelerators becoming ever more accessible, High Performance Computing Centres all around the world using them ever more, ATLAS has to find the best way of making use of such accelerators in much of its computing. Tests with GPUs - mainly with CUDA - have been performed in the past in the experiment. At that time the conclusion was that it was not advantageous for the ATLAS offline and trigger software to invest time and money into GPUs. However as the usage of accelerators has become cheaper and simpler in recent years, their re-evaluation in ATLAS's offline software is warranted. We show new results of using GPU accelerated calculations in ATLAS's offline software environment using the ATLAS offline/analysis (xAOD) Event Data Model. We compare the performance and flexibility of a couple of the available GPU programming methods, and show how different memory management setups affect our ability to offload different types of calculations to a GPU efficiently.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Comparisons of dosimetric accuracy and calculation time of ARCHER and MCNP5 codes for the Ir-192 brachytherapy case - Paper 1

In the last decade, the graphics processing unit (GPU) technology has emerged as a viable player in high-performance computing. A GPU card is designed to carry out thousands of single instructions simultaneously, showing unprecedented computing power when compared with the traditional CPU technology. It has been proved that some computationally intensive programs can be accelerated drastically on the GPUs including Monte Carlo simulations. Unfortunately, existing production Monte Carlo codes cannot be easily ported to the GPU environment. To address the needs, a new Monte Carlo code ARCHER (Accelerated Radiation-transport Computations in Heterogeneous Environment) is being developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, employing the latest GPU and the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor technologies. We can execute the code which was written using C and C++ on both CPU and GPU platforms. The ARCHER GPU code was written in CUDA C 5.0 and was tested on the Tesla M2090. There have been a few studies testing the ARCHER GPU code on several different platforms. In particular, Su et al has tested the ARCHER for external-beam radiation treatment 20 MeV monoenergetic monodirectional parallel electron beam. The comparison of the calculation results between EGSnrc and ARCHERGPU was impressive. A remarkable 224- fold speed-up factor was obtained using a NVIDIA Tesla M2090 GPU compared to a CPU. In this study, we applied the ARCHER code to dose calculation for a relatively new procedure, called accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) brachytherapy. The APBI brachytherapy dose calculation was based on RPI-AF phantom which is a 3D heterogeneous patient model. We then compared the dosimetric accuracy and calculation times of ARCHER and MCNP5 to gain insight into the accuracy and speedup of the GPU-based ARCHER code. (authors)

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗