Tech-X Press Releases

The animation displays the oscillating electric and magnetic field lines, in addition to the magnetic field magnitude on the cavity surfaces, for the fundamental mode that oscillates at 3902.81 MHz inside a "crab cavity", which is used in the final beam delivery system for particle colliders. This mode and multiple other modes were extracted simultaneously from time sequences generated by the massively parallel VORPAL computational framework. The extraction, which provides frequencies to an accuracy of a few part in 10^5, was done by use of a new algorithm [G. R. Werner and J. R. Cary, J. Comp. Phys. 227, 5200 (2008)]. The images for the movie were created using the VisIt graphical package with post processing by POV-Ray. These images and data provide engineers and physicists an understanding of potential cavity performance as it depends on shape without incurring manufacture and measurement costs.

To view this award-winning visualization, see http://www.txcorp.com/video/.

With expertise in high-performance computing and extensive domain knowledge, Tech-X offers product training and product usage consulting to help customers leverage the investment in VORPAL as quickly as possible. The company also provides consulting services to help customers configure and optimize their VORPAL environment.

VORPAL has been optimized for maximum performance on various computing platforms, ranging from desktop machines to supercomputers. Its powerful domain decomposition algorithms, checkpoint capabilities, and the use of standard data formats enable VORPAL to efficiently execute complex plasma simulations on thousands of processors.

For more information on VORPAL, please visit http://www.txcorp.com/products/VORPAL.

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado develops software solutions for research, engineering and education to aid with specific scientific challenges. Tech-X Corporation both collaborates with government and private institutions on grant-funded projects as well as offers commercially available products. Products and technologies from Tech-X help clients and collaborators to increase their design and development productivity and accelerate project deployment. For more information, visit www.txcorp.com.

Originally released in 2005, VORPAL offers a unique combination of physical models to cover the entire range of plasma simulation problems. Laser wakefield accelerators, plasma thrusters, high-power microwave guides, and plasma processing chambers are only a few of the many applications benefiting from the powerful, parallel algorithms incorporated into the VORPAL framework. New capabilities include a graphical user interface for input file creation/validation, support for non-uniform and non-Cartesian coordinate grids, new, improved computational techniques, better postprocessing support, and improved diagnostics and documentation.

Tech-X has focused on increasing the ease-of-use of VORPAL, while also adding new computational techniques and physics features to the product. "Applications like VORPAL Studio provide an easy-to-use interface for creating and validating VORPAL Tech-X Corporation input files,"stated John Cary, Ph.D., CEO of Tech-X. "Enhancement like these, which open VORPAL to a broader class of users, coupled with more physics and computational robustness enable VORPAL to be applied in new areas of research."

With expertise in high-performance computing and extensive domain knowledge, Tech-X offers product training and product usage consulting to help customers leverage the investment in VORPAL as quickly as possible. The company also provides consulting services to help customers configure and optimize their VORPAL environment.

VORPAL has been optimized for maximum performance on various computing platforms, ranging from desktop machines to supercomputers. Its powerful domain decomposition algorithms, checkpoint capabilities, and the use of standard data formats enable VORPAL to efficiently execute complex plasma simulations on thousands of processors.

For more information on VORPAL, please visit www.txcorp.com/products/VORPAL.

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado develops software solutions for research, engineering and education to aid with specific scientific challenges. Tech-X Corporation both collaborates with government and private institutions on grant-funded projects as well as offers commercially available products. Products and technologies from Tech-X help clients and collaborators to increase their design and development productivity, accelerate project deployment and improve physics education. For more information, visit www.txcorp.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boulder, CO - June 15, 2007

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, announced the release of VORPAL v2.2. VORPAL is a software framework that enables plasma simulations composed of particles and fluids for 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D geometries. New capabilities will allow researchers to apply VORPAL in new application areas and enable more advanced simulations of the physics being studied.

Originally released in 2005, VORPAL offers a unique combination of physical models to cover the entire range of plasma simulation problems. Laser wakefield accelerators, plasma thrusters, high-power microwave guides, and plasma processing chambers are only a few of the many applications benefiting from the powerful, parallel algorithms incorporated into the VORPAL framework. New capabilities include a re-architecting of the product documentation, as well as the ability to describe more complex geometries of physical problems and the addition of new physics capabilities. This release also provides support for the Intel-based Mac OS X platform.

Tech-X has focused on expanding the capabilities of VORPAL, applying the software to solving complex problems in new application areas. "The new features in this release are expanding the types of problems where VORPAL can be applied, stated John Cary, Ph.D., CEO of Tech-X. We are able to better simulate the physics in our traditional application areas, as well as branch out into modeling new devices, like ion thrusters for propulsion, and different phenomena, including areas like the physics of lightning strikes. We are confident that VORPAL can be applied broadly to solving many challenging problems.

With expertise in high-performance computing and extensive domain knowledge, Tech-X offers product training and product usage consulting to help customers leverage the investment in VORPAL as quickly as possible. The company also provides consulting services to help customers configure and optimize their VORPAL environment.

VORPAL has been optimized for maximum performance on various computing platforms, ranging from desktop machines to supercomputers. Its powerful domain decomposition algorithms, checkpoint capabilities, and the use of standard data formats enable VORPAL to efficiently execute complex plasma simulations on thousands of processors.

For more information on VORPAL, please visit www.txcorp.com/products/VORPAL

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado develops software solutions for research, engineering and education to aid with specific scientific challenges. Tech-X Corporation both collaborates with government and private institutions on grant-funded projects as well as offers commercially available products. Products and technologies from Tech-X help clients and collaborators to increase their design and development productivity, accelerate project deployment and improve physics education. For more information, visit www.txcorp.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boulder, CO - November 10, 2006

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, today announced the release of FastDL v2.0, a software framework that enables parallel computations with IDL from ITT Visual Information Solutions. With this release the performance and robustness of TaskDL, one of the components of FastDL, has been greatly enhanced.

TaskDL allows users that perform calculations in IDL that are independent of one another to farm out these tasks to a number of networked processors, or a compute cluster, to execute these tasks simultaneously. With this most recent release, the TaskDL product has been streamlined, improving performance and reliability. The new release also offers a variety of APIs (application programming interfaces) for users to interact with TaskDL from other languages such as Java, C++ or Python. Powerful task grouping mechanisms and priority schemes enable the design of complex pipelining applications as encountered in image processing pipelines.

With the emergence of cluster computing, it is now possible to split complex calculations across a number of processors, reducing the actual elapsed time required to get results. "Because IDL is widely accepted as a data analysis tool in scientific computing applications, a parallel implementation adds tremendous value to the IDL community," stated Bill Okubo, IDL Product Manager at ITT Visual Information Solutions. "Researchers can now explore their data in less time, allowing them to tackle problems that previously were beyond the realistic limits of a serial version of IDL."

mpiDL, the second component of FastDL, provides IDL users with a true interface to the standard MPI libraries which have made distributed computing a reality for C and Fortran programmers. With over one hundred MPI routines available, researchers may utilize point-to-point and collective message passing, manipulate communication groups, define specialized data types, as well as scatter, gather, and reduce data across clusters of computers while maintaining the familiar IDL syntax and ease-of-use. mpiDL uses the standardized MPI communication protocols which have been optimized for efficiency and specialized cluster topologies, speeding up interprocess communication, and allowing processes to execute on computers that do not share hard disks, such as a LAN of desktop computers.

FastDL offers two independent components, TaskDL and mpiDL, that address the varying computational needs of parallel data analysis and visualization applications. TaskDL is designed for use in applications where computations can occur independently of one another, such as feature detection in images, movie frame rendering and Monte Carlo simulations. Using TaskDL, IDL applications can be re-purposed in minutes to run in parallel on a cluster of workstations. mpiDL is an even more powerful option for computations that require different segments processing in parallel to communicate with each other, such as distributed data set analysis and finite element analysis. mpiDL is the ideal solution for scientists and developers who are familiar with parallel computing who want to leverage the full power of the industry standard Message Passing Interface (MPI).

For more information on FastDL, please visit /products/FastDL

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado develops software solutions for research, engineering and education to aid with specific scientific challenges. Tech-X Corporation both collaborates with government and private institutions on grant-funded projects as well as offers commercially available products. Products and technologies from Tech-X help clients and collaborators to increase their design and development productivity, accelerate project deployment and improve physics education. For more information, visit www.txcorp.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boulder, CO - October 23, 2006

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, today announced the release of VORPAL v2.0.0, a software framework that enables plasma simulations composed of particles and fluids for 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D geometries of arbitrary complexity. New capabilities available as part of this release allow VORPAL to solve a wider array of problems, with more accurate representations of the geometry of various components being modeled, and more advanced simulations of the physics being studied.

Originally released in 2005, VORPAL offers a unique combination of physical models to cover the entire range of plasma simulation problems. Laser wakefield accelerators, plasma thrusters, high-power microwave guides, and plasma processing chambers are only a few of the many applications benefiting from the powerful, parallel algorithms incorporated into the VORPAL framework. New capabilities with respect to electromagnetic and electrostatic solvers, coupled with new material representations and more advanced ways of modeling boundary conditions increase the scope of applications of the software. Also, added were a number of methods for dealing with particle interactions and ionization behaviors which allow VORPAL to better provide groundbreaking insight into complex physical problems.

With the emergence of cluster computing, it is now possible to conduct complex simulations with software frameworks designed to run on thousands of processors. "This new release greatly expands the types of problems we can model with VORPAL, stated John Cary, Ph.D., CEO of Tech-X. Researchers can now better model the physics of their problems and run their simulations using more realistic geometric portrayals of the devices they are studying. We are very excited about the new challenges we can address with the addition of these new features.

The core algorithms in VORPAL have been optimized for maximum performance on various computing platforms, ranging from desktop machines to supercomputers. Its powerful domain decomposition algorithms, checkpoint capabilities, and the use of standard data formats enable VORPAL to execute complex plasma simulations on thousands of processors.

Tech-X provides consulting services to help customers configure and optimize their VORPAL environment. The company also offers product training and product usage consulting to help leverage the investment in VORPAL as quickly as possible.

For more information on VORPAL, please visit www.txcorp.com/products/VORPAL.

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado develops software solutions for research, engineering and education to aid with specific scientific challenges. Tech-X Corporation both collaborates with government and private institutions on grant-funded projects as well as offers commercially available products. Products and technologies from Tech-X help clients and collaborators to increase their design and development productivity, accelerate project deployment and improve physics education. For more information, visit www.txcorp.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boulder, CO - November 14, 2005

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, today announced the release of CoReViz as a technology demonstration. CoReViz is a software framework that allows researchers to perform data analysis and visualization on remote computers while viewing and manipulating 2D and 3D graphical objects locally and in real-time.

Modern scientific simulations generate large datasets at remote sites with appropriate resources (supercomputers and clusters). Bringing these large datasets to the computers of all members of a distributed team of collaborators is often impractical or even impossible: there might not be enough bandwidth, storage capacity or appropriate data analysis and visualization tools available locally.

"The design of CoReViz is based on the experience of researchers at Tech-X Corporation of working with distributed collaborations," stated Svetlana Shasharina, Ph.D., Vice President of Distributed Technologies at Tech-X. "As an example, a researcher might run some simulation or modeling application on a high-performance computer at a remote location. The generated data now resides at a remote site. The researchers use multiple tools to extract particular subsets of the data and create 2D or 3D objects, which they then transfer for local viewing."

CoReViz partially automates such workflows and provides an integrated environment for data visualization, allowing multiple visualization tools. CoReViz allows users to leave the raw data at the location where it was generated, automatically collocate data analysis and visualization routines coming from multiple locations, run these routines on the data, and automatically distribute visualization results to multiple collaborators. The visualization objects and the data analysis and visualization scripts are much smaller than the raw data, thus the network is not overburdened.

Because CoReViz is run through a browser, the user does not need to configure an environment on the remote machine.

CoReViz is a client-server application with a Java client, C++/Python server, and CORBA middleware. The client allows the user to chat with others using the server; distribute files; open and edit local and remote files; submit visualization scripts; and distribute markups on 2D images, views of 3D objects and movies. The server runs data visualization applications using Python wrappers; runs visualization and analysis scripts; generates QuickTime movies; triggers file transfers; and mediates between CoReViz clients.

CoReViz supports multiple platforms and standard hardware. The CoReViz client, written in Java, will execute on Windows 2000/XP, Linux, or Macintosh OS X. The CoReViz server, written in C++ and Python, has been ported to run on Linux and AIX. The data objects rendered for collaborative visualization use standard outputs such as JPEG, PNG and GIF files for 2D visualization objects, VRML files for 3D visualization objects, and QuickTime movies for animation objects.

By releasing CoReViz as a technology demonstration, Tech-X is actively soliciting feedback from potential users. By incorporating this feedback, Tech-X will produce a fully-functional product that effectively meets the needs of this user community. Tech-X plans to release CoReViz as a commercial product by mid-year in 2006.

For more information on CoReViz, please visit www.txcorp.com/products/CoReViz

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado develops software solutions for research, engineering and education to aid with specific scientific challenges. Tech-X Corporation both collaborates with government and private institutions on grant-funded projects as well as offers commercially available products. Products and technologies from Tech-X help clients and collaborators to increase their design and development productivity, accelerate project deployment and improve physics education. For more information, visit www.txcorp.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boulder, CO - October 22, 2005

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado, today announced the release of VORPAL, a software framework that enables plasma simulations composed of particles and fluids for 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D geometries of arbitrary complexity. While developed in support of research in high energy physics, these capabilities enable VORPAL to simulate plasma processes in materials processing applications such as wafer fabrication, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and physical vapor deposition (PVD).

VORPAL offers a unique combination of physical models to cover the entire range of plasma simulation problems. Laser wakefield accelerators, plasma thrusters, high-power microwave guides, and plasma processing chambers are only a few of the many applications benefiting from the powerful, parallel algorithms incorporated into the VORPAL framework. Ionization and neutral gas models enable VORPAL to bridge the gap between plasma and neutral flow physics. VORPAL leverages expertise and technology developed by leading researchers and software developers in the plasma simulation community. VORPAL simulations provide groundbreaking insight into complex physical problems.

With the emergence of cluster computing, it is now possible to conduct complex simulations with software frameworks designed to run on thousands of processors. "We are very excited about the release of VORPAL," stated John Cary, Ph.D., CEO of Tech-X. "Researchers and engineers working with plasma processes can now improve the efficiencies of these processes by simulating them with VORPAL. The previous empirical methods were only economically feasible for evaluating small variations in the process. VORPAL allows them to study the effects of changing many parameters, potentially discovering new ways to get far better results."

The core algorithms in VORPAL have been optimized for maximum performance on various computing platforms, ranging from desktop machines to supercomputers. Its powerful domain decomposition algorithms, checkpoint capabilities, and the use of standard data formats enable VORPAL to execute complex plasma simulations on thousands of processors. Tech-X provides consulting services to help customers configure and optimize their VORPAL environment. The company also offers product training and product usage consulting to help leverage the investment in VORPAL as quickly as possible.

For more information on VORPAL, please visit www.txcorp.com/products/VORPAL.

Tech-X Corporation of Boulder, Colorado develops software solutions for research, engineering and education to aid with specific scientific challenges. Tech-X Corporation both collaborates with government and private institutions on grant-funded projects as well as offers commercially available products. Products and technologies from Tech-X help clients and collaborators to increase their design and development productivity, accelerate project deployment and improve physics education. For more information, visit www.txcorp.com.

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