TeraVision: a distributed, scalable, high resolution graphics streaming system

In electronically mediated distance collaborations involving scientific data, there is often the need to stream the graphical output of individual computers or entire visualization clusters to remote displays. This work presents TeraVision as a scalable platform-independent solution which is capable of transmitting multiple synchronized high-resolution video streams between single workstations and/or clusters without requiring any modifications to be made to the source or destination machines. Issues addressed include: how to synchronize individual video streams to form a single larger stream; how to scale and route streams generated by an array of M×N nodes to fit a X×Y display; and how TeraVision exploits a variety of transport protocols. Results from experiments conducted over gigabit local-area networks and wide-area networks (between Chicago and Amsterdam), are presented. Finally, we propose the scalable adaptive graphics environment (SAGE) - an architecture to support future collaborative visualization environments with potentially billions of pixels.