This article reviews that maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons—without a shot being fired—requires flexible computer power and ever-expanding images of data. ASCI researchers are faced with the challenge of visualizing computational models of a size that could hardly have been imagined a few years ago. The animated simulations reveal exactly how individual atoms and molecules interact with each other in the bombs. The fusion reactions studied by ASCI can occur in just three-billionths of a second. ASCI researchers use the software to visualize a number of components within a data set, including scalar fields, vector fields, cell-centered variables, vertex-centered variables, and polygon information. But as the research continues, the stakes get higher. Before long, scientists will need software that can visualize a terabyte or more of data. A model on the terabyte scale is incomprehensible unless it can be visualized, and the only way to fully understand complicated 3D calculations is through sophisticated graphics software.

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