MRI: Development: A Distributed Visual Analytics Sandbox for High Volume Data Streams

University Of Louisiana At Lafayette, Lafayette LA

Investigators

Abstract

This project, designing and developing an instrument that can support visual analytics on high volume, high velocity data streams, aims to offer an easy to use software interface for researchers to develop visual analytics applications that need a combination of stream processing, deep analytics, and visualization capabilities. The instrument provides the computational capacity and tight interconnection of systems to handle both real-time in-memory stream system processing and complex analytics, along with dedicated visualization processing. The instrument under development: - Offers a customized computational system design expected to offer up to an order of magnitude performance over existing systems offered by commercial hardware vendors of business intelligent solutions. - Advances knowledge and understanding in building highly-scalable big data platforms for decision makers or deals with big data generated from internet of things, and dynamic social networks that represent transportation routes, paths of disease outbreaks, social community networks, financial transactions, and recommendation graphs. - Supports data mining and analytical needs of the Center for Visual and Decision Informatics (CVDI) and specific research projects to develop visual techniques on sensor data streams, and builds upon the experimental cloud infrastructure established in the Center for Advanced Computing Studies (CACS) Lab for InterNet Computing (LINC). The real-time stream processing and analytics system comprises tightly interconnected processors with Remote Memory Access (RDMA) capabilities, low-latency Solid State Drive (SSD) with Infiniband Interconnect to support distributed in-memory data stream pre-processing, and analytics. The deep analytics nodes comprise data nodes that can handle efficient batch processing and the visualization processing node with high-end graphics cards to support visualization of massive data sets and advanced visualization venues. Supporting knowledge discovery and decision making requires a powerful computational infrastructure; without it, visual analytics on large complex dynamic graphs constructed from networks of sensors, mobile phones, social networks cannot be realized. The instrument supports applications in many areas such as: disaster response, public safety, public health, cyber security, ecommerce and financial sectors. GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations)-based connectivity to Lousiana's Optical Network Initiative (LONI) and Internet2 facilitates partnerships with researchers across other campuses nationwide and the US Ignite Community. The instrument will serve and be used by students for big data research and education. Utilizing the Louis Stokes-LA Alliance for Minority Participation (LS-LAMP), the project also facilitates participation of underrepresented students, thus increasing more participation in STEM areas. Furthermore, the instrument enables productivity for many researchers and educators.