Data are acquired from surface surveys, processed, and interpreted in order to understand the subsurface structure of a region. The duration of the processing for a 3D seismic survey can be measured in months, and datasets of over a terabyte are not uncommon. A sequence of processing steps are applied to the acquired data. After these steps have been completed, the original data volume is typically reduced by a factor of 60 or so. The next step is to apply an imaging process called seismic migration.
Migration accounts for a large proportion of the time spent in a typical processing sequence.
The migration process combines acquired data with a proposed structural model and delivers a result volume in which seismic reflectors are placed according to the model and their record in the input data. There are many flavors of 3D migration. A CM-5 system can be partitioned into smaller groups of nodes. The team used problem sizes and parameters that are representative of their commercial processing workload. Their results indicate that the code scales well with machine size.