This award will provide funds for a network of high-performance graphics workstations to support research on building visualization environments. The goals of the research are to: 1. Create tools that can be used to rapidly generate application- specific, visually-oriented computing environments on high-performance workstations; 2. Build prototype environments in the application areas of massively- parallel algorithms and architectures, asynchronous and distributed systems, and VLSI design; 3. Use these prototypes for research within the three application areas. The approach to building environments will be based on a declarative semantic conceptual architecture, in which each environment is specified as an interface to an underlying semantic model with which the user interacts. The environment always maintains the screen display as a presentation of the current state of the underlying model, so that the presentation automatically changes when the state of the model changes. The mapping between the states of the underlying model and the screen display is defined declaratively, in terms of the desired relationship that must be maintained, and not on the precise program used to maintain it. This approach will require advances in user interface management, knowledge bases, and declarative languages, which are active research areas in the department.
