COOPERATIVE 3D SEISMIC GROUP SET UP
A group of oil companies has formed a supercomputer consortium to provide an infrastructure for the advancement of parallel supercomputing technology for three dimensional seismic processing.
Members of the consortium, based in Dallas, share the initial expense of obtaining state of the art parallel technology for seismic processing.
The oil companies and seismic processing companies represented in the consortium benefit from rapid technology transfer from the academic world to the production environment, accelerating software development, and ultimately reducing oil exploration costs, the group said.
Charter members include ARCO Oil & Gas Co., Texaco Inc., Exxon Corp., Intel Corp., and Western Geophysical Corp.
Chief hardware for the University of Texas at Dallas/Intel Parallel Computing Consortium is an Intel iPSC/860 parallel supercomputer.
The consortium said it plans to use the system to develop an innovative prestack processing system for reservoir characterization and monitoring, conduct parallel seismic algorithm research, and 3D seismic processing and modeling.
The machine will provide more accurate images of subsurfaces of the earth's structure and reduce processing costs and long term software maintenance costs, said George McMechan, consortium director.
"It is increasingly difficult to achieve higher computational speeds in single processor-based systems. Parallel processing is the natural and most economical way to achieve the orders of magnitude in speed and performance required in seismic processing," McMechan said.
Proximity of the consortium will give graduate students advanced parallel programming experience and expose participating companies to those students as potential employees.
The consortium has established a parallel training center to promote application of parallel supercomputing within the seismic data processing industry.
The center conducts semiannual workshops focusing on the latest parallel advances and experiences of consortium members.
Members pay $25,000 for a 2 year initial commitment.
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