About 400 gigabytes of seismic data were visualized at once as a result of a joint collaboration between Marathon Oil Corp., Landmark Graphics and SGI. 

"Using SGI's Onxy4TM, Landmark's GeoProbe visualization software, and Marathon's seismic data, we were able to demonstrate multi-attribute seismic volume that took 15 minutes to calculate versus the usual 24 hours," stated Bill Bartling, senior director, marketing strategy, SGI.

"Our technology can allow the operator to look at four times the geographical area of data together than they could previously," he suggested.  "Another option for them is to add four times the data density for the same geographic area to gain higher fidelity.  Being able to visualize larger volumes of seismic data for larger geographic areas or at higher resolution can help operators drill fewer wells to pinpoint hydrocarbons."

The most common alternative to such technology is a personal computer graphics cluster, according to him.  "However, the amount of memory per node is accessible only by that node.  So, we end up needing very fast interconnects or dealing with higher data distribution latency."

In the visualization demonstration, amplitude data, showing rock properties and coherence data,  discontinuities like faults and channel margins, were fused together and displayed simultaneously in the same view.  The Marathon seismic volume that was tested is depicted in Figure 1.

The graphics computer comes with shader technology to illuminate or accentuate certain features in the seismic image. 

http://www.sgi.com

http://www.lgc.com

http://www.marathon.com