PCI Geomatics, a world-leading developer of geoimaging software and systems, announced today that the GXL Cloud system it deployed for Esri in 2011 has successfully been used to process large volumes of 1 meter pansharpened Ikonos imagery. Imagery processed through the use of the GXL Cloud system is now available for free through ArcGIS Online.
The imagery processed using PCI’s GXL system was published to the ArcGIS Online World Imagery map earlier this month. Expanded coverage is now available for Korea and several countries in the Middle East and North Africa – with several more updates planned over the coming months. Samples of the imagery processed using PCI’s GXL technology can be accessed here.
PCI’s GeoImaging Accelerator (GXL) technology was designed for automation and speed, leveraging off-the-shelf CPU/GPU hardware through highly parallelized processing capability, thereby accelerating production throughput over traditional desktop systems by orders of magnitude. Cloud-based services offer the advantage of low-cost computing resources across multiple instances that can be switched on and off as required, providing on-demand scalability. PCI has worked with Esri Inc. to deploy its GXL technology to the Amazon Cloud, where multiple instances can be tasked to process large volumes of imagery — on demand.
The GXL Cloud System implementation is tailored to process high-resolution optical imagery, and can generate pansharpened, orthorectified, color-balanced tiled mosaic products at high speed using multi CPU/GPU and multi-instance enabled technology. The complete system can transform uncorrected Level 1 frame-based data from multiple satellite sensors into thousands of orthorectified and mosaicked products — on demand.
“Through diligent work and a great amount of innovation, we have overcome significant hurdles which have limited the availability of cloud computing for the customers’ Earth Observation and Imagery needs,” said David Stanley, Chief Technology Officer at PCI Geomatics. “By staging the data directly within Amazon’s facility and coupling it with our Cloud-optimized GXL system, we can leverage the true power of Cloud Based processing for our customers, that is, on-demand scalability for high-speed production.”
“Through the use of the GXL Cloud system that PCI has deployed to our Amazon Cloud instances, we are working diligently to provide high-resolution and high-quality content as quickly as possible for the ArcGIS Online platform,” said Steven Lambert, Senior Program Manager at Esri.