VizWorld.com

We all know that there are millions and millions of people using the internet, all over the world. Our selection today starts with Pingdom‘ map of internet users per time zone, and with Community 102‘ look at how different age groups interact online. Then, the folks at Kissmetrics made a visualization of Google’s 2011 Web Analytics Review, and from Webtrends and Reviver Soft comes the history of Web and Social Analytics, and the history of Browser usage.

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Graphics, Science design, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations

In a surprising move, Intel’s Havok division (the physics SDK developer that Intel bought a few years back) has just acquired Trinigy and their 3D Vision Engine.  It’s a surprising move for Intel, who dropped their Larrabee and Project Offset projects long ago.  For Havok tho, this may be an attempt at growing their physics SDK to include cross-platform gaming.

“The team at Trinigy is very excited by the opportunity to join Havok.” said Felix Roeken, General Manager of Trinigy.  “Havok and Trinigy have been partners for a number of years and both companies share very similar philosophies about how technology should be built and delivered to customers.  We are confident that this acquisition will be very positive for Trinigy’s customers and employees.”

Intel Acquires Trinigy, Adds 3D Engine To Gaming Portfolio – HotHardware.

Science havok, intel, trinigy

We continue today with the infographic overview of the internet, based upon recent works published by Webhosting Buzz, Cisco and Mashable. In this selection, we’ll take a look at the some of the major players and websites, and to what the internet will look like in a future nearby – if that’s even possible!

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Graphics, Science design, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations

Last week, the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the internet as we know it – the World Wide Web. Although the internet itself is much older, it was only two decades ago that we began to participate in one of the most important technological, social and cultural revolutions in our History. So, this week we’ll bring a selection of recent infographics celebrating the fast growth of the internet, starting today with The Grasshopper Group‘s and Ria Novosti‘s look at that amazing history. After that, the great piece from Go-Globe, showing us what happens in 60 seconds on the web, Online School‘s interactive state of the internet, and the Alive Web, from Rounds.

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Graphics, Science design, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations

Infographic Looks at 70 Years of Supercomputers

Graphics, Science digest, infographics, list

HardOCP got a huge scoop this week by interviewing Euclideon CEO Bruce Dell on some of the claims and allegations about their “Unlimited Detail” technology.

The Euclideon approach is one of creating more efficient processing and is not about throwing more power at old technologies. Bruce’s unique approach to 3D graphics has come about due to his isolation from the rest of the industry. He was not professionally educated in 3D graphics and all of his employees mentioned that they had to go through a steep learning curve to grasp the alien approach to building 3 dimensional world “Bruce Dell style.”

The interview itself is fairly long, running over 40 minutes.  He maintains his claims of unlimited detail and shows some preliminary (very preliminary, from 7 years ago) animation support, and continues to claim they have “no memory limits” due to some revolutionary “compaction” algorithms, that he won’t go into details on.

I still think that his technology is the same technology used in many other point-cloud rendering algorithms, they’ve just tweaked it for more gamer-uses.  They do discuss the allegations from Notch, mixing some praise and insults hand in hand.  He shows earlier versions of the technology from his personal development (still full of lots of replication), and various stages of development.

They get a little more in-depth into the algorithm as well:  Basically they’ve got a Point-cloud rendering algorithm joined with a screen-space optimized search algorithm, so that they can quickly search their space along a ray-tracking type path.

I still agree with Notch, and think their major limitation is memory & disk space.  Until they release some numbers on their compression and storage I have to claim all their “unlimited” statements are blatantly false PR.

Now, one thing I think that Euclideon may have in their favor is upcoming Cloud Technologies.  Their current scenes are plainly relying on heavily re-utilized blocks of data simply rotated and cloned around the scene.   This is how they’re reducing their current storage requirements (combined with their data compression schemes).

Like Notch claims, maybe they need 1000 Terabyte hard drive to store their scenes, but if that can all be stored in a giant Google or OnLive storage cloud and accessed remotely then they have a chance to truly revolutionize graphics.  I can imagine a setup of something like OnLive just shipping screen pixels back to users, accessing compute & storage remote, would be impressive.

via HARDOCP – Euclideon & Unlimited Detail – Bruce Dell Interview – Euclideon & Unlimited Detail – Bruce Dell Interview.

Graphics, Science euclideon, interview

Infographic Looks at 70 Years of Supercomputers | PEER 1 Hosting Blog.

infographics

Anandtech has some great writeups on two new NVidia technologies that I’ve frankly been a bit surprised I haven’t seen press releases on.  The new NVidia Maximus and Quadro Virtual Graphics ideas both sound like big deals, but information has been scarce outside of a special demonstration event at SIGGRAPH.

First off is a new technology called “NVidia Maximus”, that voids the typical SLI-requirements of matching cards and lets you put a Quadro and a Tesla card in your computer at the same time, letting each of the two cards do what they’re best at.

So where does Maximus fit into this? By making the setup more economical. The obvious implementation of a multi-GPU workstation is to double up on Quadro cards. High-end Quadro cards are just as compute capable as Tesla cards – the Tesla C2070 is clocked exactly the same as a Quadro 6000 – but a Quadro 6000 is over $1000 more expensive than a Tesla C2070 on the open market. Since the ray-tracing task is entirely a compute task there’s no need for the second card to be a more expensive Quadro card when it could be a cheaper Tesla card, and that’s Maximus in a nutshell: using a Tesla card as a dedicated compute GPU to assist a Quadro card. It’s not necessarily groundbreaking, but for NVIDIA’s customers it would be a cheaper way to do real-time modeling and ray-tracing together.

The other technology, which I find vastly more interesting, is the NVidia Quadro Virtual Graphics Technology codenamed Monterey.  This technology is a driver modification allowing you to access remote graphics resources, Quadros of course, for remote rendering.    Added at the driver level like this, modifications of individual applications should be minimal, and it allows multiple users to take advantage of “cloud” like resources for visualization and rendering.  Think of it as your own private OnLive cloud, running your own applications.  Think of getting multi-Quadro performance on your little Laptop.

NVIDIA’s aspirations with the technology are fairly lofty as it’s an ecosystem product that ties together multiple products. Quadros would be server-side, while clients can be lower-powered Quadros (e.g. laptops) or even mobile Tegra-based products – both of which provide for the decoding of the H.264. The ultimate result would be that users could access the rendering power of Quadro cards remotely, from computers and mobile devices alike (ed: it’s the mainframe era all over again). Presumably NVIDIA has a use case in mind on the mobile side, as we’ve yet to see workstation-type software on a tablet or phone. The more immediate benefit would be the centralization of Quadro cards, allowing businesses to operate power-hungry Quadro cards in the controlled environment of a server room instead of menacing desktop users, and to establish a common pool of Quadro cards for a group of users rather than buying a Quadro card for each individual user.

This is also an important step forward for Nvidia’s growing ARM/Tegra business.  Allowing mobile Tegra devices, like the newer Tablets and Mobile Phones already using Tegra, to access remote Quadro resources for heavy graphics would be a huge step forward if the bandwidth was available.

via AnandTech – SIGGRAPH 2011: NVIDIA’s Upcoming Workstation Technologies – Project Maximus & Monterey Technology.

Hardware nvidia, siggraph

A company called “Village Instruments” claims to be developing a special ViDock Expansion device for PC & Mac, enabling laptop customers to upgrade their video cards via a Thunderbolt-connected device.

According to the company, a laptop can connect to a large format display (or two), keyboard, and mouse with just one cable. The chassis also features a 2-port USB hub that allows the user to add more devices to the one-step plug-in such as a printer, external hard drive, USB headset, and more.

Uses are a bit limited right now, with only the newest Apple laptops really supporting Thunderbolt.  However, when PC’s come out in 2012 with the new connector this could be an interesting option for folks wanting PC-class graphics on laptops.  You’ll be losing a bit of your portability, but for folks used to Docking Stations & Port Replicators it could be a welcome addition.

via External Thunderbolt Graphics Adapter in the Works.

Hardware laptop, thunderbolt, village instruments

To close our language-themed infographic selection, we decided to take a look at fun facts, like some of the terms used in the internet, from Grammar.net, some very peculiar slang insults, by Ponsidiomas, and even the origin and meaning of some popular Pirate expressions, provided by Today I Found out. Also amuzing, and important if you plan to travel abroad, are the infographics made by the folks at Pimsleur Approach and Pop Crunch, filled with tips on what NOT to say if you’re in another country.

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Graphics, Science design, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations