Visualization of numerical simulations of astrophysical and fusion plasmas with the SDvision code

Abstract The new generation of massively parallel mainframes enabled computational physics to make a quantum leap in complexity and size of numerical simulations, especially in the domain of astrophysics. The COAST project at CEA/IRFU at Saclay, started in 2005, involves astrophysicists and software engineers developing simulation codes in magneto-hydrodynamics and generic tools for data structuration and visualization. A dedicated software for visualizing the massive amounts of data produced by these simulation codes has been developed, the SDvision code, deployed in the framework of IDL Object Graphics. This code is suitable for interactive and immersive navigation for the analysis of 3D results and also for videos and stereoscopic movies productions for people at large. In this paper, we present the capabilities of the code SDvision and some applications in the domain of astrophysics simulations but also in the domain of fusion plasmas studies. In particular, two challenging simulations have been performed in the framework of the ‘Grands Defis GENCI/CINES’ on recent supercomputer Jade in CINES in 2010 and we present the visualization studies for such huge computation results.