VizWorld.com

Next month at CES, LG will be demonstrating some new monitors.  One that really caught my eye is a new offering called the “DM92″ which offers mere 1mm bezels on the top and sides, making it an ideal candidate for multi-screen setups like NVidia’s 3-monitor 3D Vision gaming setup.

The DM92 series showcases a premium design by employing the slim bezel of LG’s technology- and design-driven CINEMA SCREEN whose aesthetic superiority is accompanied by the lustrous chrome stand. During the monitor TV’s attractive 27-inch display, users can access files on their PC, play games or just chill and watch theirfavorite TV show

I can’t find any mention of the 1mm bezel in the Press Release, and no mention of price either.  Guess we’ll have to wait until next month to see what really materializes.

via LG DM 92 Borderless 3D Monitor.

Hardware lg, monitor

I first heard of Quantum Dot Displays, or QDEF, a few months ago but wasn’t able to find out much information about how they magically improved the color of monitors.  The few photos were easily attributed to bad photography or unfair comparisons, but over at GraphicSpeak Jon Peddie gets into the details of how it works.

Quantum dot phosphors are larger than a water molecule, but smaller than a virus. Embedded in a sheet of plastic these tiny phosphors convert blue light from a standard GaN LED into different wavelengths based upon their size. Larger dots emit longer wavelengths (red), while smaller dots emit shorter wavelengths (green). Blending together a mix of dot colors allows Nanosys to engineer a new spectrum of light. This enables LCD manufacturers to accurately match their LED backlight to their LCD color filters to achieve the best possible color and efficiency. The result is professional photo and cinema level color performance found in high-end monitors from Dolby, HP, and NEC.

The first QDEF monitors and televisions should start hitting shelves next year.  Can’t wait to see them for myself.

via GraphicSpeak » Quantum dot filter displays are the next big thing.

Hardware display, qdef

At the recent “Autodesk University”, Infinite Z was there demonstrating their zScape product.  They call it a “virtual holographic display”, but from watching their video I would say it’s somewhat like a Wacom Cintiq with a 3D Display:  You use their laser-pen to interact with software but the visuals are displayed in stereoscopic 3d (requiring their glasses), enabling a new level of depth and interactivity to the experience.

Infinite Z says it is initially focused towards the digital/product design, scientific, medical, GIS/geospatial, and government markets. For now it ships only with drivers for Maya and Showcase, but Infinite Z says other software vendors are on board and the number of products zSpace supports will grow rapidly. A proof-of-concept zSpace demo for Autodesk Alias Design software also ships with the product.

Impressively, the system is available today for a mere $6,000 and works out-of-the-box with Autodesk Showcase and Maya. Check out their demo video below.

zSpace – A Virtual-holographic Experience from Infinite Z on Vimeo.

via GraphicSpeak » Infinite Z launches zSpace virtual holographic 3D display for designers.

Hardware holographic, maya, stereoscopic, zspace

FireUser.com has a user-contribution from Antonio Fontenele benchmarking a Quadro 1800FX against the AMD FirePro v5800 in a variety of tests.  In an interesting twist he compares the various vendor “optimized” drivers against their counterparts provided by Autodesk (Both of these cards are Autodesk approved), and finds a startling different in performance.

In Cadalyst Systems Benchmark 2011 test, Quadro a little faster than FirePro while using AutoCAD default drivers due c2011_8.dwg file score, but it was slower than FirePro in the other files (where FirePro was 102.32% faster). However, using AutoCAD optimized drivers, Quadro earned 613 points while FirePro earned a higher score equal to 2060 points. This is means about 336.05% faster in AutoCAD 2011.

Get all the numbers in the article.

Performance Comparison in AutoCAD between NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800 and AMD FirePro V5800 | FireUser Blog.

Hardware amd, autocad, autodesk, benchmark, nvidia

The latest update for the 2011 Xperia phones contains one subtle little feature that’s actually a huge one for web developers: Integrated and native support for the WebGL standard. A possible first-step toward unifying the 3d experience on mobile devices, Xperia and Android get the title of being the first to bring it to reality.  Over at SonyEricsson’s website, they have a developer article on how it all works.

In this article, Anders Isberg from Sony Ericsson’s Technology Reseach department explains more about WebGL and what to think of when you develop 3D web applications for touch-enabled devices. If you scroll down, you will also find three WebGL examples that you can browse to from the Android browser, if you have the latest software on your 2011 Xperia™ phone. You can also check out how it looks in the video above.

via Xperia™ phones first to support WebGL™ — Developer World.

Hardware android, mobile, webgl

3Dconnexion has just launched their newest 6DOF input device at the Autodesk University event in Las Vegas.  The new SpaceMouse pro combines their usual 6DOF sensors and ergonomics with a nice on-screen display and a nice arrangement of quick-keys (15 buttons, 5 quickview keys, 4 function keys, and 4 keyboard modifiers) all from 1 hand.

“3D mice revolutionize the way people interact with digital 3D content,” said Antonio Pascucci, vice president of products, 3Dconnexion. “We are committed to developing products that meet the needs of 3D users. SpaceMouse Pro provides a professional 3D navigation experience, enabling users to better understand their 3D content, while its new advanced ergonomic design ensures a comfortable working experience.”

It’s available now for $299 for pretty much every OS in mainstream use.  Get the full details after the break.

Read more…

Hardware 3dconnexion

Medical imaging company Sectra is demonstrating a new interactive touchscreen visualization tale at RSNA2011, merging automatic 3d segmentation algorithms with new high-resolution touchscreen displays.

With powerful algorithms, Sectra Visualization Table identifies a bone or a bone fragment, according to the user’s touch interaction, and removes it from the image. Accordingly, orthopaedic surgeons can gain an overview of the joints, thereby facilitating pre-operative planning specifically in orthopaedic surgery. As with the rest of the functionality, the new segmentation tool is operated using the fingertips.

I love technology like this, even though it’s reminiscent of Immersadesk displays.  However, a nice visualization method is only half the problem: Convincing doctors to do a lengthy & expensive CT or MRI instead of a cheap & quick x-ray is the bigger hurdle.

via Sectra Visualization Table to support real-time bone segmentation | Cision Wire.

Hardware biomed, sectra

Last week at SC11 I saw the “ZCorp” 3D Printer in the Intel booth.  It’s a great 3D printer that natively prints in-color models, and they showed it on the floor printing fake-wood airplane propellers (to go with Intel’s Flight Simulator), along with wrenches and multimeter designs.  I had planned to write it up, but just found out that ZCorp is no-more, being acquired by 3D Systems.

“Z Corporation, the leader in multi-color inkjet 3D printing, today announced that it will be acquired by 3D Systems Corporation (NYSE:DDD), becoming the first company capable of delivering an integrated platform of mixed 3D printing technologies, 3D content, and 3D design services. The news is part of a wider announcement today in which the Contex Group, a subsidiary of Ratos AB, announced that it had signed an agreement to sell its subsidiaries, Z Corporation and VIDAR Systems, to 3D Systems Corporation for USD 137m in cash. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of 2011 or early 2012.”

3D Systems has really been on the merger-run lately, acquiring lots of companies. ZCorp seems to have one of the better 3D Printers I’ve seen, so now hopefully 3D Systems can add in some extra software to improve their model management capabilities.

via 3D Systems Adds a Bit More Color, Plan to Acquire ZCorp – SolidSmack.com.

Hardware 3d, 3d systems, printer, zcorp

Big news from Nvidia today as their new “Maximus” system comes to light.  First announced back at SIGGRAPH, it’s now available for public use.  If you’ve ever found yourself wanting to do both GPU compute and rendering at the same time (Possibly using PhysX simulations with high-end rendering, or running GPU-accelerated CFD simulations combined with visualization) and found yourself dealing with complex driver configurations or dark incantations of system configurations to get it all to work, then Maximus is exactly the system you’ve been looking for.

“To those of us who have spent their careers focused on workstations, NVIDIA Maximus represents a revolution,” said Jeff Brown, general manager, Professional Solutions Group, NVIDIA. “Previous workstation architectures forced designers and engineers to do compute-intensive work and graphics- intensive work serially and often offline. They can now do them at the same time, on the same machine, allowing professionals to explore more ideas faster and converge quickly on the best possible answers.”

Done entirely in the driver, you can now buy a good graphics-card (Fermi-based NVidia Quadro, all the way down to the $200 Quadro 600) and match it with a nice NVidia Tesla card and let the driver map your processes entirely.  Right now the matching is a bit naive, putting CUDA/OpenCL processes on the Tesla and DirectX/OpenGL processes on the Quadro, but that alone can offer a huge boost in performance by allowing both rendering and compute processes to operate in parallel at maximum power.

The system is already tested and approved for an impressive list of engineering & CAD tools like ANSYS, CATIA, and MATLAB, along with other tools like Adobe Premiere and Bunkspeed.  For most of these tools, they’ve already got great GPU-accelerated compute aspects, and GPU-accelerated rendering features.  Unfortunately, it’s almost always been either/or and never both at the same time.  With the new Maximus drivers you can run both aspects at full-speed, without special configuration or dealing with special software settings.

They’ve also got a great list of OEM Hardware partners offering full support for hardware and software, all on day 1.    Another great feature is their new adaptive power consumption. It’s no secret that NVidia cards can be tough on a power supply, and adding two to a machine can be a real strain. With the new Maximus system, you (or the Hardware OEM provider) can specify voltage limits, preventing the cards from drawing too much power and burning out your power supply.

It’s a complete package all-around.  Get the full press release, along with some great demonstration videos of Maximus in action, after the break.

Read more…

Hardware driver, maximus, nvidia

This is a bit off-topic for us here at VizWorld, but interesting nonetheless.  CogniMem will be launching and demonstrating their new “CogniBlox” module at SC11, an FPGA-based stackable module targeted at large “pattern recognition” tasks.  It’s effectively a specialized neural-network processing system that offers about 4000 “neurons” per block, and the blocks can be stacked in all 3 dimensions for surprising density.  It’s an excellent candidate for the first exascale computing systems, but will be highly specialized in what it can do.  This makes it similar to the early MDGRAPE system, which hit 1 Petaflop well before other general-purpose computers, but was specialized and not capable of running LINPACK (thus making it ineligible for the Top500).

“CogniBlox architecture is based on multiple CM1K (1024 neuron) components allowing for constant parallel matching of vectors in 10 microseconds regardless of the number of vectors being compared at the same time,” said Bruce McCormick, co-founder, president and CEO of CogniMem.  “Recent announcements from IBM about its DARPA SyNAPSE project have rekindled interest in this exciting technology.  Based on multiple generations of IBM patented ZISC technology, we have perfected this approach for practical commercial use, providing unmatched performance at low power, and made it available now.”

With this making Exascale feasible, one has to wonder if such special-purpose machines may open the door to more mainstream general-purpose machines soon.  You could almost argue that NVidia’s development in the Tesla space could be a step towards bridging the cap (putting special-purpose hardware alongside general-purpose hardware).

Get the full press release after the break.

Read more…

Hardware, Science cognimem, hpc