Ascent¶

A many-core capable flyweight in situ visualization and analysis infrastructure for multi-physics HPC simulations.

Introduction¶

Ascent is an easy-to-use flyweight in situ visualization and analysis library for HPC simulations:

Supports: Making Pictures, Transforming Data, and Capturing Data for use outside of Ascent
Young effort, yet already includes most common visualization operations
Provides a simple infrastructure to integrate custom analysis
Provides C++, C, Python, and Fortran APIs

Ascent’s flyweight design targets next-generation HPC platforms:

Provides efficient distributed-memory (MPI) and many-core (CUDA or OpenMP) execution
Demonstrated scaling: In situ filtering and ray tracing across 16,384 GPUs on LLNL’s Sierra Cluster
Has lower memory requirements than current tools
Requires less dependencies than current tools (ex: no OpenGL)

Ascent focuses on ease of use and reducing integration burden for simulation code teams:

Actions are passed to Ascent via YAML files
Replay capability helps prototype and test actions
It does not require GUI or system-graphics libraries
It includes integration examples that demonstrate how to use Ascent inside existing HPC-simulation proxy applications

To get started building and using Ascent, see the Quick Start Guide and the Ascent Tutorial. For more details about building Ascent see the Building documentation.