Abstract:
GPUs are ushering in a new era of data visualization. Today, shoving one hundred thousand query results into a chart makes an illegible mess and kills interactivity. The good news is that infovis researchers invented smarter layouts that maximize visibility. The bad news is that these layouts and basic interactions are computationally intensive enough that analysts can no longer simply slide a slider, drag a graph cluster, etc. With the availability of GPUs, however, the rules have changed. This talk shows examples of smarter designs and how we use GPUs to turn them into interactive tools. For experts, we will discuss how running in browsers and even phones led to Graphistry's tiered GPU visualization engine approach, and touch on our use of WebGL, WebCL, and our own in-house libraries.