[Beowulf] massive parallel processing application, required

[Steve Heaton]

G'day Jim and all

Two interesting space examples would be the original Viking lander pics. 
The story goes that they were in such a rush to get the images to the 
press conference that they 'made the sky blue and the ground red'.

Later, more careful analysis showed the sky a more dusty pink/brown and 
the surface a truer brown (stronger purple component).

At the other end of the scale, the general public 'scooped' the Huygen's 
team by processing the raw landing approach images using the likes of 
Photoshop and had them on the Web in advance of the official release.

I'm sure, Jim, you likely have more inside details than I ;)

On the topic of met models, if anyone's looking for some good 'toy' code 
to start from, have a look at PUMA:
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/PUMA.215.0.html

I recommend GrADS for the viz: http://www.iges.org/grads/

The PSU/NCAR MM5 code scares the willys out of me! ;)

(There *is* a train of thought here... I've used PUMA many moons ago to 
build my own Martian and Titan models. A certain perverse pleasure in 
watching your model shake itself to pieces!)

Cheers
Stevo

=====

Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:37:23 -0800
From: Jim Lux <James.P.Lux at jpl.nasa.gov>
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] massive parallel processing application
	required
To: Mark Hahn <hahn at mcmaster.ca>,	Mitchell Wisidagamage
	<06002352 at brookes.ac.uk>
Cc: beowulf at beowulf.org
Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20070131213007.0307aa18 at mail.jpl.nasa.gov>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 02:37 PM 1/31/2007, Mark Hahn wrote:

 > >sure - academia is all about publishing, so you don't want someone
 > >else to scoop you.


This is an interesting aspect.  All the latest Announcements of
Opportunity for space research (think cameras taking pictures of
Mars, or analyzing rocks etc.) have fairly fast time lines(weeks, not
months or years) for relase of data to general public, and you have
to put your plans and budgets for public distribution in the
proposal.  No more holding onto the data, "recalibrating and
reprocessing",  until everyone gets their dissertations done.