In order to help the Côte d’Azur’s academic players to perfect their research and interact more easily with companies and AI institutes, Inria has announced that it is contributing to the development of OPAL (Observatoire Pluridisciplinaire des Alpes-Maritimes). The aim is to encourage transdisciplinary research thanks to the numerous tools shared within this platform.
The OPAL project is part of a real desire to structure all the region’s research and teaching institutes around the Université Côte d’Azur. Thanks to OPAL, these institutes will have a truly multi-functional platform. OPAL is based on the pooling and evolution of the high-performance computing and visualization equipment of several research establishments: those of Inria Sophia Antipolis – Méditerranée, the Université Côte d’Azur (Azzurra mesocenter), the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur (SIGAMM mesocenter) and Mines ParisTech (Laffitte cluster). These research establishments have their own funds and are also supported by the State (via the DRRT), by the South Region – Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur, by the Sophia Antipolis agglomeration community (CASA) within the framework of the CPER (State-Region Plan Contract) 2015-2020 and by the IDEX UCAjedi for the Azzurra equipment.
Within the framework of OPAL, the Nef and Azzurra high-performance computing equipment, their associated tools for processing massive data, and the immersive visualization room are shared. One of the real novelties initiated by the OPAL project focuses on this new immersive room measuring 16m3. It consists of a 5.3m2 touch screen with a 16/9 ratio and a latest generation stereo laser projector (32 contact points, 6 infrared cameras and a 2560*1440 pixel rendering). Inside, 3D technologies from Gouraud’s shading and Phong’s shading are combined with a very high speed (40Gb/s) and low latency network connection. The sharing of the Nave and the immersive visualization room makes it possible to meet certain specific expectations (experimentation, code development, application prototyping, etc.) in the processing and visualization of collected data in particular.
Because of its performance, OPAL can also be used in the context of deep learning and data sciences, which allows to focus on accelerators and massive storage. INRIA Sophia Antipolis – Méditerranée was interested in contributing to OPAL by integrating the Nef and all the visualization equipment previously mentioned.
Translated from Inria contribue à OPAL : une plateforme mutualisée pour le calcul haute performance, le traitement et la visualisation de données
