Using Scientific Visualization Techniques to Visualize Parallel Network Simulations

Although parallel discrete event simulation has been used to simulate and study the performance of various network topologies, little effort has been spent on visualizing the time series data that result from these simulations. Visualization can be useful in multiple aspects of simulation, from debugging and validating models to gaining deeper insights from the data. In this paper, we present our preliminary work in developing 3-dimensional animations of data from optimistic parallel discrete event simulations. The visualizations are developed by using VTK and ParaView, and examples are shown on fat-tree and dragonfly network models using the ROSS simulator. We also discuss our plans for future work with the visualizations and their integration into an in situ analysis and visualization system being currently developed.