Subject:
Review of CC:PE Paper C500
From:
Tom Crockett <tom@COMPSCI.WM.EDU>
Date:
Wed, 13 Jun 2001 15:20:39 -0400
To:
fox@csit.fsu.edu

C. Paper and Referee Metadata

Paper Number: C500
Date:  June 2001
Paper Title:  Parallel visualization of gigabyte datasets in GeoFEM

Authors:  I. Fujishiro, Y. Takeshima, L. Chen, H. Nakamur, Y. Suzuki

Referee:  Thomas W. Crockett

Address:  College of William and Mary
          Computational Science Cluster
          P.O. Box 8795
          Williamsburg, VA  23187
          
          tom@compsci.wm.edu (757) 221-2762

Recommendation:  reject


D. Referee Comments (for editor only)

This paper is all but useless.


E. Referee Comments (for author and editor)

I would characterize this paper as a very shallow case study.  The
purported topic (parallel visualization of large datasets) is both
timely and interesting to a growing segment of the computational
science, computer graphics, and parallel computing communities, but
the content falls far short of what the title and abstract imply.
Instead, the paper is simply a laundry list of visualization
techniques that have supposedly been implemented in parallel and 
incorporated into the GeoFEM system.

Specifically, the paper fails to:

(1) Provide an overview of the significant body of related and prior
    work on this topic which has accumulated over the last dozen
    or so years.

(2) Describe the parallel algorithms involved, the challenges which
    were encountered in designing and implementing them, and the
    strategies which were adopted to address these challenges.

(3) Provide any analytical or experimental data to suggest how well
    the parallel visualization techniques work from either the
    standpoint of parallel efficiency or raw performance.  The one
    data point which is given is based on a data set which is modest
    in size by current standards and appears to reflect lackluster
    performance.

To be publishable, even in a conference venue, this paper needs much
more technical depth.  Currently, it contains nothing novel, and
precious little that would be of interest to the CC:PE readership.


F. Presentation Changes

This paper has a split personality.  It starts out talking about the
architecture of a parallel visualization system, but abruptly shifts
topics and becomes merely an illustrated list of visualization
techniques, all of which appear to be based on previously reported
work. It needs a sharper focus, much more detail, and a better sense
of what the technical contribution is.