An Architecture for Interactive In Situ Visualization and its Transparent Implementation in OpenFPM

Live in situ visualization of numerical simulations–interactive visualization while the simulation is running–can enable new modes of interaction, including computational steering. Designing easy-to-use distributed in situ architectures, with viewing latency low enough, and frame rate high enough, for interactive use, is challenging. Here, we propose a fully asynchronous, hybrid CPU–GPU in situ architecture that emphasizes interactivity. We also present a transparent implementation of this architecture embedded into the OpenFPM simulation framework. The benchmarks show that our architecture minimizes visual latencies, and achieves frame rates between 6 and 60 frames/second–depending on simulation data size and degree of parallelism–by changing only a few lines of an existing simulation code.