From: cfaigle@spica.npac.syr.edu (Christopher T. Faigle)
Subject: NPAC/MOVIE papers available via ftp
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: PAPERS: Syracuse University NPAC/SCCS
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:18:37 GMT


All,
        The Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University
        has now made the following two papers available via anonymous ftp:

        1) SCCS-394   "SuperComputing and VR" by Dr. Wojtek Furmanski
        2) SCCS-300   "MOVIE Model for Open Systems based High Performance
                        Distributed Computing" by Chris Faigle, Wojtek
                        Furmanski, Tom Haupt, Janusz Niemiec, Marek
                        Podgorny, and Diglio Simoni


        The first paper was presented at the Meckler VR conference
in September of this year.  The second was presented at the IEEE
Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing HPDC-1 conference
also in September.  Following this note are the references and
abstracts for both papers.

        To get the papers:
        1) ftp minerva.npac.syr.edu
        2) use "anonymous" and <your-user-id> as login and password
        3) cd documents/tech-reports/text
        4) get furmanski394.ps
        5) get faigle300.ps


        Depending upon response, we may make our future papers available
via this or some other distribution method.

For more information, questions or comments, please contact either
myself (cfaigle@npac.syr.edu) or Dr. Furmanski (furm@npac.syr.edu).

Regards,
-Chris Faigle


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"SuperComputing and Virtual Reality"
        Wojtek Furmanski

Northeast Parallel Architectures Center and Department of Physics
201 Physics Building, Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY 13244-1130
(315) 443-33891
furm@sccs.syr.edu

presented at the Meckler Conference: Virtual Reality '92, San Jose, CA,
23-25 Sept, 1992

Abstract
--------
This talk presents our planned VR program at the Northeast Parallel
Architecture Center (NPAC) at Syracuse University (SU). I start with an
overview of various parallel architectures, contributing to today's
SuperComputing and I describe next the overall structure and mission of
NPAC, including both the academic thrust of Computational Science as well
as the industrial outreach program NYS ACTION, aimed at integrating
parallel processing into the NYS industry. I point out that our strategy
is to integrate VR into High Performance Computing and I also describe
the interdisciplinary aspect of our approach to VR at SU that includes
NPAC, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Physics, as well
as collaboration with VR companies such as AGE, Inc,. SimGraphics or VRI,
Inc. In fact, our initial involvement in VR started from contacts with
Chris Gentile from AGE, a successful designer of PowerGlove, who is an
SU alumnus and started recently a small scope VR Lab at SU.

Next, I describe in more detail the Multitasking Object-oriented
Visual Interactive Environment (MOVIE), currently under development at
NPAC, and I point out that this system shares many common features
with the emerging generation of VR operating shells such as for example
Trix from Autodesk, Inc., discussed earlier at this Conference by Randy
Walser. MOVIE is a distributed system, composed of a network of MOVIE
servers- multithreading interpreters of MovieScript. MovieScript is a
high-level, object-oriented computation and communication protocol,
constructed by extending the PostScript language towards domains such as
3D graphics, high-level communication and high performance computing. In
the latter area, I describe our current plans of merging the MOVIE project,
funded by the Army, with the High Performance Fortran at NPAC, funded by
NSF and DARPA.

Finally, I discuss a series of new VR projects at NPAC, currently
starting or at the evaluation stage, such as Parallel Processing and VR for
Education, Battlefield Visualization, SIMBRAIN, Cognitive Spaces for VR,
Parallel Oracle for VR Databases, Virtual Training Center for Agile
Manufacturing, SU as Beta Site for Consumer VR Products.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"MOVIE Model for Open Systems based High Performance Distributed Computing"

Chris Faigle (Department of Computer and Information Science and NPAC),
Wojtek Furmanski (Department of Physics and NPAC),
Tom Haupt (NPAC),
Janusz Niemiec (Department of Computer and Information Science and NPAC),
Marek Podgorny (NPAC),
and Diglio Simoni (Department of Computer and Information Science and NPAC),

Northeast Parallel Architectures Center
Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

to be presented at the IEEE Symposium on High Performance Distributed
Computing HPDC-1, Sept 9-10, 1992, Sheraton University Inn,
Syracuse, NY

Abstract
--------
MOVIE (Multitasking Object-oriented Visual Interactive Environment) is
the new software system for High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC),
currently in the advanced design and implementation stage at Northeast
Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC), Syracuse University. MOVIE System is
structured as a multiserver network of interpreters of high-level
object-oriented programming language MovieScript. MovieScript derives
from PostScript and extends it in the C++ syntax based object-oriented
interpreted style towards 3D graphics, high performance computing and
general purpose high level communication protocol for distributed and
MIMD-parallel computing. The present paper describes the overall Open
Systems based MOVIE design and itemizes currently implemented, developed
and planned components of the system.
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds