Visualizing 1 trillion data points in real-time with .NET charts
DemoA WPF project made to render 1,000,000,000,000 data points using the DigitalLineSeries.
A few years ago, we breached the rendering of 1 billion data points in a chart setting LightningChart .NET with the world record. Today, LightningChart .NET can visualize 1,000 times more than before.
LightningChart .NET is now able to render 1 trillion data points in a real-time scrolling use-case.
What is LightningChart .NET?
.NET has been intensively developed to meet the highest performance requirements of demanding application developers and end-users.
Software developers and engineers working in highly demanding industries like vibration analysis, medical devices manufacturing, or trading and finance, build data-oriented applications that must process massive amounts of data in real-time without downsampling a single data point.
If you want to learn more about the technology powering LightningChart .NET visit the product page.
What is the 1 trillion data points major breakthrough about?
The new version of LightningChart .NET v.10.3 has brought in several performance improvements and new additions, including a brand-new line series named the DigitalLineSeries which displays a line alternating between two Y-values.
The novelty about the DigitalLineSeries is that it refers to a binary stepping line for visualizing digital logic states and from all the line series available in LightningChart .NET, this one consumes the least amount of memory.
Image: Visualizing 1 trillion data points with the DigitalLineSeries in LightningChart .NET
Test specifications
Device Hardware & Operating System Specifications
OS
Windows 10
CPU
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
RAM
128 GB
GPU
Nvidia GTX 1070
Test Parameters
Digital line series count
100X axis length 10 billion data points
Data point append count / round / series:
6250*
Test overview
During the tests, we monitored the frames-per-second (FPS) and observed a high FPS rate of around 60hz. The frames-per-second indicate the times per second that a chart or visualization is updated. The higher the FPS rate, the better but as a reference, a good FPS should be at least 40 or more.
No downsampling was used
Downsampling refers to a technique that contrasts true high-performance as it is implemented when there is a need to render million, billion or more data points.
The way how downsampling works is by processing only a limited percentage of data points, for instance, instead of processing 100% of the data points, only 1% is processed. This is a common workaround that eases the resources consumption in the device at the cost of a huge loss of information.
When visualizing 1 trillion data points, every single data point was fully included in the rendering.
LightningChart .NET becomes the first charting library capable to visualize several times more data than any other WPF data visualization solution has been able to, using 128 GB RAM.
1 Trillion data points
The last available preset corresponds to rendering 1 trillion data points using 128 GB of RAM. This preset is suggested to be used in high-end devices for applications with data intensive processes.
Replicating the test
LightningChart .NET can be downloaded via the free trial version of 30 days.
After downloading LightningChart .NET, you’ll get access to the desktop interactive examples where you can search for the DigitalLineSeries and execute the test.
The test can be adjusted to your device’s specifications, for instance, visualizing 5 billion data points with 4 GB RAM or 40 billion with 16 GB RAM.