High performance visualization for Astronomy and Cosmology: the VisIVO's pathway toward Exascale systems

Petabyte-scale data volumes are generated by observations and simulations in modern astronomy and astrophysics. Storage, access, and data analysis are significantly hampered by such data volumes and are leading to the development of a new generation of software tools. The Visualization Interface for the Virtual Observatory (VisIVO) has been designed, developed and maintained by INAF since 2005 to perform multi-dimensional data analysis and knowledge discovery in multivariate astrophysical datasets. Utilizing containerization and virtualization technologies, VisIVO has already been used to exploit distributed computing infrastructures including the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). We intend to adapt VisIVO solutions for high performance visualization of data generated on the (pre-)Exascale systems by HPC applications in Astrophysics and Cosmology (A\&C), including GADGET (GAlaxies with Dark matter and Gas) and PLUTO simulations, thanks to the collaboration within the SPACE Center of Excellence, the H2020 EUPEX Project, and the ICSC National Research Centre. In this work, we outline the evolution's course as well as the execution strategies designed to achieve the following goals: enhance the portability of the VisIVO modular applications and their resource requirements; foster reproducibility and maintainability; take advantage of a more flexible resource exploitation over heterogeneous HPC facilities; and, finally, minimize data-movement overheads and improve I/O performances.