Parallelizing I/O-intensive image access and processing applications

This article presents methods and tools for building parallel applications based on commodity components: PCs, SCSI disks, Fast Ethernet, Windows NT. Chief among these tools is CAP, our computer-aided parallelization tool. CAP generates highly pipelined applications that run communication and I/O operations in parallel with processing operations. One of CAP's successes is the Visible Human Slice Server, a 3D tomographic image server that allows clients to choose and view any cross section of the human body.