Geophysicists and others engaged in oil exploration have never had so much data to work with. Over the past few years, technological advances have made it possible to achieve

Figure 1. An NVIDIA Quadro Plex dedicated visual computing system (VCS) drives the advanced visualization necessary for the Landmark GeoProbe multi-volume interpretation and visualization software shown here. (Images courtesy of NVIDIA)
higher resolution survey data, while the areas measured have also increased. This is a timely development — as higher oil prices have made it economical to pursue reserves that are harder to reach, oil and gas companies are re-sampling previously explored fields at higher resolution to discover deposits that may have been missed as well as measuring ground shifts over time in fields under production to determine where pumping efforts are being most effective. Similarly, new seismic tools and real-time imaging software offer the potential to greatly increase available global reserves.

So far, so good — but there’s a catch. The vast amounts of data being gathered — often 100 Gb or more — make empirical analysis virtually impossible. Instead, geophysicists rely heavily on data visualization to spot evidence of promising reserves. In an ideal world, this would mean being able to visualize an entire regional dataset at high resolution in a single view. Geophysicists could perform detailed multi-attribute analysis with extreme precision while retaining the full context needed to identify large-scale trends. Better decisions could be made more quickly, and oil and gas companies could drill more productive wells.

In reality, though, graphics processing power has failed to keep pace with the rapid growth in survey datasets. Unable to visualize an entire dataset at high resolution, geophysicists have been forced to work with smaller subsets of data that may obscure larger trends or settle for lower resolution screens that may misrepresent an area’s true potential. Both slowing analysis and reducing its precision, this tradeoff between detail and context limits the amount of data that can be explored and the scenarios that can be evaluated, hampering the effectiveness of a company’s computer-assisted exploration efforts.

But more effective visualization systems are now coming into view. Recent innovations have made it possible to visualize and interpret large datasets at the highest possible resolution without losing context and unlock their full potential for identifying promising reserves.

Thinking outside the box
As a dataset grows larger, a visualization system requires greater graphics processing power to translate its full depth and detail into pixels on a screen. However, as graphics cards get more powerful, they consume more space and power and generate more heat and so are constrained by the physical capacity of the server or workstation within which they are installed.

A new visual computing system (VCS) changes this picture by literally thinking outside the box. The NVIDIA Quadro Plex 1000 renders physical constraints moot by removing graphics processing power from the workstation or server and housing it within a standalone chassis where power, space and heat can be managed more effectively. Plugged into existing PCs, workstations or servers, the system acts as a supercharged graphics card to deliver the scalability needed for large-scale, high-definition visualization. Instead of being limited to two graphics cards, a single workstation can now draw on four to eight high-end cards, dramatically increasing pixel processing power.

The impact of the system can be seen in its implementation as part of a complete
Figure 2. The NVIDIA Quadro Plex.
visualization system from Landmark, a brand of Halliburton Drilling, Evaluation and Digital Solutions, which also incorporates a Verari Systems E&P 7500 visualization server and Landmark GeoProbe software. Powered by up to eight AMD Opteron processors, one or two Quadro Plex boxes, and 128 gigabytes of memory, the system can drive powerful displays such as the Sony SXRD 4K projector, with a resolution of eight million pixels — four times the resolution of a standard HDTV projector — as well as the highest-resolution LCD monitors now available. By enabling higher resolution on larger screens than was previously possible, the system provides a wider field of view while making it possible to see the details in any exploration prospect more readily.

Designed specifically to enable interactive interpretation using multi-attribute and multi-volume seismic data, well data, cultural data and reservoir models, the Landmark visualization system enables geoscientists to drill deep into their datasets while maintaining a view of the big picture. Attendees at last fall’s Society of Exploration Geophysicists conference in New Orleans saw the system used to visualize and interpret 17,375 sq miles (45,000 sq km) of 3-D seismic data drawn from more than 100 different 3-D surveys. Instead of parsing the data for display on a standard monitor, the Quadro Plex made it possible to present the full detail of the data on a high-resolution 56-in. LCD desktop display.

Beyond the visualization center
The low cost of a system such as the Landmark implementation — comparable to the annual maintenance cost of other systems — makes it possible for oil and gas companies to rethink the way they deploy visualization capabilities within their organization. While the cost of a high-end display system remains significant for the time being, in principle enough graphics processing power can be added to a given workstation to support a large number of projectors and a correspondingly higher number of pixels. By providing high-resolution visualization in a team room or collaboration room scenario, companies could free geophysicists from the need to schedule time in a shared visualization center. The system also can enable other applications such as asset team software tools used to create field development plans to run in a high-resolution display environment.

By increasing the number of graphics cards that can be made available to a given system, the system makes it possible to redirect some of the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) to general-purpose computing applications beyond image processing. The algorithms for seismic processing and other oil and gas industry tasks are similar enough to image processing to be well-suited to the system’s specialized computing architecture. Landmark’s GeoProbe product already takes advantage of the graphics processing capability of the GPU, using custom GPU shaders to implement advanced features. Moving forward, independent software vendors will begin to leverage the technology and capabilities of the GPU for real-time analysis to introduce new functionality based on calculations that were previously too time-consuming to be realistic.

Speeding some operations by one or two orders of magnitude, the shift from a traditional computing architecture to the high-performance GPU has the potential to fundamentally change workflows: processes that once took 10 minutes could potentially be completed in 1 minute. A dramatically shorter cycle time will enable geophysicists to evaluate more scenarios and explore data more thoroughly than previously possible.

As the gap narrows between the growing bulk of today’s datasets and the processing power needed to visualize them effectively, oil and gas companies will increasingly be able to combine larger datasets, higher resolution, more projectors and greater graphics speed to enable better decisions by their computer assisted exploration personnel — and drill more profitable wells.

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