State of the art
The current state of the art can be summarized very simply with the conclusion of the 2010 SciDAC report: "New, scalable, high-performance computational tools are essential" [EXA10].
Positioning of the ExaViz project
The goal of the ExaViz project is to design advanced interactive visualization and analysis tools for massive data sets and computation results in the advent of exascale computing by deploying a modular and parallel software infrastructure. We specifically target scientific applications for manipulating and exploring simulations of complex biological objects or materials architectures at the nanoscopic scale.
Context, position and objectives of ExaViz
While the massive increase in computational power has made it possible to simulate large-scale molecular phenomena routinely producing huge and complex data sets and computation results, the ability of human users to deal with them has been trailing behind.
Context, social and economic issues
The economic implications of the bioinformatics sector were evaluated in 2005 by Business Communications Company [BCC05]. Rapid growth is forecast in the global bioinformatics market, with a value of approximately 3 billion euros in 2010 (see Figure below), and average annual growth of almost 16%.
