HIGH PERFORMANCE PHOTOGRAMMETRIC PROCESSING ON COMPUTER CLUSTERS

Abstract. Most cpu consuming tasks in photogrammetric processing can be done in parallel. The algorithms take independent bits as input and produce independent bits as output. The independence of bits comes from the nature of such algorithms since images, stereopairs or small image blocks parts can be processed independently. Many photogrammetric algorithms are fully automatic and do not require human interference. Photogrammetric workstations can perform tie points measurements, DTM calculations, orthophoto construction, mosaicing and many other service operations in parallel using distributed calculations. Distributed calculations save time reducing several days calculations to several hours calculations. Modern trends in computer technology show the increase of cpu cores in workstations, speed increase in local networks, and as a result dropping the price of the supercomputers or computer clusters that can contain hundreds or even thousands of computing nodes. Common distributed processing in DPW is usually targeted for interactive work with a limited number of cpu cores and is not optimized for centralized administration. The bottleneck of common distributed computing in photogrammetry can be in the limited lan throughput and storage performance, since the processing of huge amounts of large raster images is needed.