The latest release of Foster Findlay Associates’ (FFA) seismic analysis and volume interpretation package claims a step change in performance. SVI Pro 2009 introduces an interactive facies classification module that uses NVIDIA’s graphics processing unit based (GPU) compute engine to accelerate real-time number crunching.
Speaking at the FFA user meet in Aberdeen last month, NVIDIA’s Jean-Christophe Baratault vaunted the merits of GPU-based computing in oil and gas. GPU computing is set to ‘transform’ 3D seismic interpretation and SVI Pro 2009 is ‘the first commercial application to harness the power of this technology for 3D seismic analysis.’
FFA’s benchmarking was performed using SVI Pro to extract a 3D dip azimuth cube. The baseline timing on a 5GB dataset took 43 minutes on twin quad-core CPU workstation. Running the same computation using NVIDIA CUDA and a ‘mid-range’ graphics board brought this down to 13 minutes, a 3.25-fold speedup. Using a higher end device with three Tesla boards, time dropped to 3.5 minutes for a times 12 improvement. Other enhancements in SVI Pro 2009 include comprehensive color and opacity blending to highlight subtle variations in the data. More from info@ffa.co.uk.
© Oil IT Journal - all rights reserved.