An integrated framework for interactive simulations

The paper describes the design of an integrated framework for interactive, parallel and distributed scientific simulations. The framework is driven by a unified computational engine that can “seamlessly” integrate parallel/distributed computing, interactive visualization, and scientific databases. The fundamental innovation is a unifying data representation and an associated semantically specialized distributed virtual shared memory that can simultaneously support dynamic computations, visualization, and interaction operations. We believe that such a unified framework will enable realistic simulations, offering the prospect of dramatic insights into complex phenomena