October 2002

Kitware announced ParaView 0.6

Kitware announced today the release of ParaView 0.6, the first public release of their scientific visualization application. ParaView was designed with the need to visualize large data sets in mind. The goals of the ParaView project include the following:

• Develop an open-source, multi-platform visualization application.
• Support distributed computation models to process large data sets.
• Create an open, flexible, and intuitive user interface.
• Develop an extensible architecture based on open standards.

ParaView runs on distributed and shared memory parallel as well as single processor systems and has been succesfully tested on Windows, Linux and various Unix workstations and clusters. Under the hood, ParaView uses the Visualization Toolkit as the data processing and rendering engine and has a user interface written using a unique blend of Tcl/Tk and C++. Please see the ParaView web page for detailed information.

The Origins of ParaView:

ParaView is being developed by Kitware in conjunction with Jim Ahrens of the Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory. ParaView is funded by the US Department of Energy ASCI Views program as part of a three-year contract awarded to Kitware, Inc. by a consortium of three National Labs - Los Alamos, Sandia, and Livermore. The goal of the project is to develop scalable parallel processing tools with an emphasis on distributed memory implementations. The project includes parallel algorithms, infrastructure, I/O, support, and display devices. One significant feature of the contract is that all software developed is to be delivered open source. Hence ParaView is available as an open-source system.

Kitware, Inc. is a small, privately held company offering consulting, products, and services in the areas of 3D graphics, visualization, image processing, and volume rendering. Kitware provides support and training for the widely used Visualization Toolkit system. Kitware is also developing other open source and proprietary software including the National Library of Medicine Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit. Kitware is located in the Tech Valley region of New York State.