Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IBM's 5.2M Pixel Flat Panel

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-thats-a-screen dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A current prototype of the Roentgen monitor offers a resolution of 200ppi (pixels per inch), with a total of 5.2 million full-color pixels, laid out in a 2,560 by 2,048 grid. Once the production version of the monitor is released, Greier said it will be able to display two full-sized 8.5-inch by 11-inch documents side by side. The article also notes that the monitor needs a 4 head Matrox graphics board to drive it." Thats ungodly. Sign me up.

142 comments

  1. I know what you mean - but.... by evilpete · · Score: 3

    The advantage of having a much higher dpi resolution means you can get crisp large fonts without the need for anti-aliasing.

    You've got to remember to up the font size when you up the resolution on a monitor, otherwise you do end up squinting at tiny text - though sometimes (scanning large web docs, editing html etc.) it is helpful to fit a large body of text on screen at once.

    At the moment it is much easier to read printed rather than on-screen type. Hopefully higher res monitors will fix this pretty soon - or my eyes are going to be dead by the time I'm thirty.


    +++++
    --
    +++++
    The harder you look the less you see. That's what we're up against.
    1. Re:I know what you mean - but.... by ratbag · · Score: 1

      I'm thirty and my eyes are still okay, so don't worry yourself unnecessarily.

      Rob.

    2. Re:I know what you mean - but.... by wjr · · Score: 1

      With really high resolutions, you also run into a lot of other problems where fixed-size bitmaps were used: it becomes practically impossible to distinguish between all the tiny 16x16 toolbar icons in Windows applications, for example.

      When I worked at PARC I had one of the prototype 7 megapixel displays which had a resolution up near 300dpi (282dpi if I remember right). It was 4-bit grayscale only, not colour, but text looked REALLY nice. A lot of Web sites really sucked, though, because they used frames or tables whose sizes were specified in terms of an absolute number of pixels, which usually meant that I'd see a column containing about 2-3 words per line, since each character on my display was 3x wider (in pixels) than they'd been expecting.

      Antialiased text on this display was just beautiful.

  2. if only.... by iPerson · · Score: 1

    the monitor was more like 100ppi, or even down to 72ppi, like most "normal" monitors. You'd be able to get 8 "pieces of paper" on the screen at once, at a resolution the human eye can actually cope with.

    And the windows icons wouldn't look like specks of dust....

    --
    I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
    1. Re:if only.... by mr3038 · · Score: 1
      With technology like ClearType, there is no reason that a page can't be displayed at just as clearly to the human eye at 100ppi as at 200ppi

      Sorry but this is certainly wrong. Say we have 10"x10" 200ppi display (2000x2000 pixels) and we have 500 lines of text on it. It has now 4 pixels for each line of text - with good antialiasing it might be barely readable. With 100 ppi you have only 2 pixels per line - there is no way text could be recognizable. Now if we could have 400 ppi display still with 10"x10" we would have 8 pixels per line which could be readable even without antialiasing (not looking great though). So display with more ppi is obviously better. Why do you think that 1200 dpi printer makes better result than 300 dpi printer?

      About physical size I would only comment that it only makes difference if you cannot select distance you look at your display from. You may use 1280x1024 head mounted display and it feels equally big (if not bigger) with 19" display on your desktop.

      IMHO 10"x10"x200ppi is equal to 20"x20"x100ppi when it comes to for what you can use it. You just need to use it from different distance.

      And bigger monitor with the same resolution (instead of ppi value) will be more expensive. Reason: you cannot decrease amount of light you create per area unit (because display would look darker otherwise). Because all known ways need more energy for brighter light when using same technology it will cost more to produce bigger display (for example in case of normal CRT you need to shoot much more electrons).

      This isn't to say that smaller display is cheaper because there is limit when it's too hard to create smaller device. I think I would be happy with 300ppi 19" monitor.
      _________________________

      --
      _________________________
      Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
    2. Re:if only.... by iPerson · · Score: 1

      Arrrrgggggggg! I will beat the dead horse one more time.

      If you have a larger monitor, you can display more PAGES at ACTUAL size. This is what I have been saying all along. If you have a smaller monitor, you can not. At one point in the original article they mentioned that this is very useful in some situations. I agree. I have done newspaper layout before... I want to see a bunch of pages at the same time, at ACTUAL size. Not half size. 100ppi has always been good enough to do this... now give me a bigger monitor.

      A monitor at 100ppi has plenty of clarity to display text on an ordinary printed page (about 12pt) at actual size. I know, I have one. I never said that it would be great when fonts rendered 4 pixels high at actual size... of course that's true, but who puts text like this on a PRINTED PAGE? Even with your fancy 1200 dpi printer, you can't read it.

      As far as the cost goes... we are talking about a LCD display here, not a CRT. They've been doing approx. 100ppi transistors for a long time now... I know, I have them in my laptop's screen. Making them 1/4 the size of that makes each one more expensive, naturally. Yes, they may be more energy efficient, but that's not the point. By making something using 4000000 cheapo 100ppi transistors, you've just saved money, instead of making something out of 4000000 expensive 200ppi ones.

      ClearType is only icing on the cake after that.

      I hope I have made it clear that time. :)

      --
      I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
    3. Re:if only.... by iPerson · · Score: 1

      Not that a vector based format for photos would work, though. There are too many things that can not be accurately described by vectors, and even if they could be, the amount of data required to describe them would be enormous... exponentially more than a similarly detailed pixel format. Still, 10 megs of pixel data for an image on a monitor with half the pixel size will look 1/4 of the size it previously did, which means that 4 times the data is required to take advantage of the added resolution. If you blow up the 10 meg file 4 times, you don't take advantage of the higher resolution anyway, unless you take into account anti-aliasing. Lots to mull over. In the mean time, whatever happened to the Photoshop-Illustrator hybrid that Adobe was talking about? It might be a step in the right direction.

      --
      I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
    4. Re:if only.... by CIHMaster · · Score: 3

      This is why the issue was brought up that what is needed is a vector based GUI. A vector based GUI would behave much like a 3D game would, in that regardless of the pixel count on screen, the objects remain the same size visually. So even if your monitor had 2500 x 2500 pixels, you could have a 1280x1024 (or higher/lower) equivalent resolution with photographic clarity. That sounds REALLY good to me.

    5. Re:if only.... by lindsayt · · Score: 1

      re the statement that if it were 100ppi you could get 8 "pieces of paper" on the screen in a size you could actually read: If you decrease the resolution you will fit less text on the screen, not more. Hence, if it can fit two full pages at the max res (2560x2048), then at half that (actually 1/4 because it's two dimensions) (100 ppi translates to 1280x1024 in this context) then you will not quite have enough space to display one sheet of paper, though it will be mighty clear. Higher resolution is always good because even if you choose to run a 2560x2048 capable display at a lower resolution it will look better than a display that can only handle 1280x1024, since the former would use 4 pixels to represent every "pixel" in 1280x1024, whereas the latter will use only one pixel for every "pixel" in the same mode. Four small dots more closely approximate a square than one large dot, so images will appear sharper at lower resolutions. There is never a good reason to choose to buy a lower-resolution display if you can afford the higher-resolution types, because higher-res displays approximate low resolutions much better than low-res types.

      --
      I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
    6. Re:if only.... by iPerson · · Score: 1

      That really sounds like the way things should be headed in a future of 200ppi, 300ppi, perhaps even someday 400ppi displays. Suddenly, the pixel means very little in the world of imaging.

      Oh, I will miss my Photoshop. ;)

      Hmmm... a vector based format for photos...

      --
      I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
    7. Re:if only.... by Anonymous+Commando · · Score: 1

      Not that a vector based format for photos would work, though. There are too many things that can not be accurately described by vectors, and even if they could be, the amount of data required to describe them would be enormous... exponentially more than a similarly detailed pixel format

      Hasn't there been some work with fractal compression algorithms for photographic images? I seem to recall a few years ago a Windows demo of fractal image compression (I think it was Iterated Systems, but they don't seem to be doing it anymore) - you could zoom in, zoom out, and still get quite good quality as you zoomed in - less pixellation and artifacting.

      Anyhow, on a vector-based system, a fractal-based system for traditional "bitmap" images would still be able to take advantage of the higher PPI, wouldn't it?

      It's also occured to me that on a vector/fractal GUI, that the actual monitor/video card resolution will become less meaningful in terms of productivity, and will start to be more like dot-pitch - related only to the clarity of the screen. Layout, etc. for applications in this type of system could be strictly relative to either the window size or the screen size - instead of specifying a line from (5, 5) to (1004, 750) you would specify it as (0.5, 0.5) to (99.5, 99.5). The system would allow for arbitrary precision - instead of 0.5, you could specify 0.4977263881 if you felt that more accurately reflected what the co-ordinate should be.

      My mind is racing with other ideas - thinking about how this could simplify web site design (no more worrying about what resolution people are running), how this could improve computing for visually impaired (but not legally blind) users, stuff like that... but I should really get back to work. *@#%$!! slashdot... :=]
      ________________________

      --
      Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
    8. Re:if only.... by iPerson · · Score: 1

      No, that's not quite what I was getting at.

      Say a screen is, for sake of easy math, 10 inches x 10 inches, 200ppi. This means the resolution is 2000x2000. We could fit one "sheet of paper" on this, at 200ppi.

      Now imagine a screen twice the physical size (20x20), with 100ppi. The resolution is still 2000x2000. You can fit 4 sheets on this screen, though, because of it's *physical* size, not the size of the resolution.

      With technology like ClearType, there is no reason that a page can't be displayed at just as clearly to the human eye at 100ppi as at 200ppi... and with a physically bigger monitor, you can have more "actual size" sheets per page. Plus, this bigger monitor is probably cheaper... it's the same screen, only the pixels are not so sub-microscopic, and probably easier to produce.

      --
      I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
  3. Mmmmmmm..... by sigsegv · · Score: 1

    ....is for monitor. Mmmmmmmmmm.

  4. Only 200ppi? by douglass · · Score: 1

    I think the disturbing part of all this is how excited we all are (I'm drooling over it for one) over a 200ppi display. Admittedly, its far better than current displays, but even a cheap inkjet printer can hit 300dpi without a problem. And I've got a laser here at my office that can do 1200dpi. Does anyone know at what resolution the human eye can see at? IOW, when are we going to get documents on screen that look half as decent as its own printout?

    1. Re:Only 200ppi? by Daniel+Neades · · Score: 1

      Don't forget that a printer dot can only be one colour. Consequently, you need to use multiple dots together to create shades of grey or colours. Thus, the effective resolution of a printer is lower than you would think for certain applications. Of course, having crisp 1200 dpi black-on-white text is very nice :-)

      --
      -- Daniel Neades, Araxis Ltd (www.araxis.com)
  5. Re:Good for astronomy by Hodag · · Score: 1

    Professional digital photography users are already dealing with resolutions this large. A mid-range 35mm film scanner will produce 6 megapixels. Medium format scans produce even more pixels.

    A professional who is looking at digital backs for $10,000 or so could also be quite interested in this device.

  6. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by bored · · Score: 1

    Actually, what I have found is that shadow mask monitors tend to converge better over the long run than the aperture grille ones. The third party Sony FD based monitors tend to be the worst in my experience. There is something about that flat screen technology that the OEM's can't seem to get right because the convergence seems to drift over very short time periods (a few hours).

  7. radiation sickness by PD · · Score: 2

    Monitors aren't supposed to give the user a big radiation dose. Ya, I know that I'm sitting at the dirty end of a particle accelerator right now.

    Naming their monitor technology Roentgen worries me a bit.

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  8. This vs. The SGI Flatpanel 1600SW by cjsnell · · Score: 1

    200ppi sounds nice. It's certainly more than the 110ppi I get with my SGI 1600SW flatpanel. Still, I think I'll stick with my SGI. First of all, you can pick up one for around $3000 mas o menos. Secondly, the "sexiness" of this monitor is second-to-none. SGI did a beautiful job styling this flatpanel. The lines are just as nice when viewed from behind as they are from the front. I've also noticed that, unlike the Sony GDM-F500R monitor (which is Sony's top-end) that sits next to it on my desk, the SGI flatpanel is polarized. I noticed this when I wore my polarized shades into my office one day and saw the screen turn black when I cocked my head 45 degrees to either side. I'm wondering why Sony isn't doing this with their monitors. I think the polarization is what gives the SGI flatpanel its extraordinary anti-glare ability. My office has several large windows behind the desk and in the early afternoon (like right now), it's almost impossible to see the Sony monitor without the blinds closed. Even with the blinds open, the SGI flatpanel is as bright and contrasty as always.

    For a while, the big let-down about this flatpanel was SGI's use of the (now defunct) #9 Revolution IV graphics card and the so-called "OpenLDI" digital interface. Basically, it meant that one card and one card only worked with this monitor. But recently, SGI has released a VGA-to-LDI adapter that lets you hook any video card up to the flatpanel. The question I have is: what video card (besides the #9) supports the SGI's funky (yet wonderful) 1600x1024 resolution?

    Yeah, the IBM flatpanel sounds nice, but I think I'd take three SGI flatpanels on my desk instead.

    Chris

    1. Re:This vs. The SGI Flatpanel 1600SW by bofh23 · · Score: 1
      The question I have is: what video card (besides the #9) supports the SGI's funky (yet wonderful) 1600x1024 resolution?

      The first crop of SGI Intel-based workstations, the 320 and 540 series, supported the 1600SW out of the box with their Cobalt chipset. The SGI O2 could also drive it with a special adapter.

      It's really kind of sad that the industry went with the other digitial signalling technology, which is encumbered by patents and limited in resolution. Check out SGI's whitepapers on the subject. I think the new MultiLink Adapter is way overpriced. They should include it with the monitor IMHO.

      --
      "Yeah well ... The Dude abides."
  9. I am not so sure... by MKalus · · Score: 1

    ....

    that I actually want to sit in front of that thing... Roentgen invented the X-Rays.... And even though I would like to leave an "imprint" in the world, it doesn't have to be as a shadow of my self on the backwall of my office :)

    Michael

    --
    If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
  10. Re:Calculations (aka What?) by Macdude · · Score: 1

    The outside dimentions of the monitor are 21"x16.5". The displayable image is 12.8" x 10.24".

    --
    "Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
  11. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by Cassandra · · Score: 1

    It's interesting that a blurry (compared to a monitor) tv can be just as effective at smoothing blocky low resolution stuff as the best, most intensive anti-aliasing effects.

    Actually anti-aliasing on images often happens after the image has been rendered (for best results it should be applied before), and at that point there is nothing else to do but apply a blur filter... so your observation is probably correct :-)

  12. Multiple monitors by John+Jorsett · · Score: 2

    Cool as it would be to have the biggest, baddest display on the block, I think it still makes more practical sense to have several smaller ones. (Besides, what could be cooler than an array of four flat panels arrayed in front of you? You can pretend you're ground control for the space shuttle.) Take a look at this website for some ideas, as well as this slashdot article.

    1. Re:Multiple monitors by Potatoswatter · · Score: 1

      IMHO, this is one of the biggest advantages of having a Mac. My PowerBook can plug into a second monitor and use its 8MB of VRAM to drive both at decent resolutions.
      Windows 98 added this feature (a full decade after the Mac did - in 1988) but from what I've heard, it's spotty and unstable. Multiple-monitor support often requires slight modification of the way graphics code is written (all drawing commands have to be sent to both cards), and because Windows apps do generally funky nonstandard stuff more often, M$ instability seems to make sense (tho I'm not a Windows programmer). Multiple-monitor support was added at the same time as color support in the Mac.

      Ramble on!
      foo = bar/*myPtr;

      --

      Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
    2. Re:Multiple monitors by Nobody · · Score: 1

      Multimon support on Win9x and NT is mostly app independent. Usually the worst thing that happens is dialog boxes appear on the wrong screen. Annoying but not fatal and increasingly rare.

      Still, you do need to make sure you have compatible video cards.

    3. Re:Multiple monitors by John+Jorsett · · Score: 2

      Still, you do need to make sure you have compatible video cards.

      Some manufacturers (matrox for example)are putting out cards that will drive multiple monitors from a single board. I think that makes the most sense. The thought of trying to persuade boards from different manufacturers to harmoniously coexist gives me acid flashbacks to the early days of the PC. Been there, done that, ain't goin' back.

  13. The link that wasnt there... by nutty · · Score: 1


    IBMs project page:

    http://www.research.ibm.com/roentgen/

    /nutt

  14. Wow... by Darkness+Productions · · Score: 1

    Did anybody look at the IBM website for this thing? 3 transistors per pixel, 1.64 miles of wiring for the LCD alone... No wonder it's gonna be priced outrageously... In case you can't find the link, click here to go there.

    --
    Glen
    Track your fuel economy
  15. Drule damage by Forge · · Score: 4

    I think we should file a class action suite against Slashdot for the loss of our keyboards. How do these people sleep at night knowing they have cause do many gallons of drool to clog, short circuit and rust the keyboards of nerds.

    The loss of earnings is staggering and the share human trauma of being unable to use you computer is just mind bugling.

    Rumor has it that they have signed a deal with the guys making the "Happy Hacking Keyboard" to increase sales.

    --
    --= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
  16. isn't anyone else concerned? by Pope · · Score: 4

    Roentgen was the scientist who discoveredy X-Rays, which were called "Roentgen Rays" for many years. What the hell is in that thing?! :)

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

    --
    It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
    1. Re:isn't anyone else concerned? by dvduijn · · Score: 1

      If you read the link, it is called Roentgen because it can be used to view X-ray pictures on screen.

  17. Framerate by Ex+Machina · · Score: 2

    What's the point of running such a big monitor for games if the frame rate sucks. Me.... I'll stick to Wolfenstein 3D on my 1ghz Athlon...

  18. 200ppi/2560x2048/11x17 display? by GeekLife.com · · Score: 1

    Does that compute? Right now I've got 96ppi/1600x1200 and not quite 11x17 display size.

    I would think you'd have to have quite a bit more than 2560x2048 at that ppi to get a screen that size. Or am I doing the math wrong/missing some calculation?

    In addition, the screen ratio they give is 1.25, as opposed to the 1.33 of most other resolutions.
    -----

    1. Re:200ppi/2560x2048/11x17 display? by GeekLife.com · · Score: 2

      For instance, how was the previous IBM prototype the same 200ppi/2560x2048 with a diagonal viewing area of only 16.3 inches?

      Pythagoras says we need a hypotenuse of 20.2" to get a 11x17 viewing area.
      -----

    2. Re:200ppi/2560x2048/11x17 display? by lindsayt · · Score: 1

      This screen does in fact only have a 16.3" diagonal. Perhaps they mean it can hold two pages of text side-by-side if we ignore the one-inch outside margins. Then they only need 9x15 (std. page is 6.5x9 of text, so that's 9x13, plus the 2" for the inside margins). Then there would be more than enough screen size. This monitor could hold two pages of text side-by-side in full-size as long as you don't need the margins.

      --
      I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
    3. Re:200ppi/2560x2048/11x17 display? by lindsayt · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry, I was slightly flawed in my last reply. At a viewing area of 9x15 (the minimum needed to show the text full-size with internal margins) you would need a diagonal of 17.5". I guess you could only get two full-size pages on this screen if you eliminated all margins. THen you would have 9x13, which has a diagonal of 15". Of course the problem is that without margins text is very hard to read, no matter how clear it is. That's the problem with all online text (take for example this commentary). Without margins there is no whitespace to focus your eyes on the text, leading to eyestrain. Notice that the most expensive books have the biggest margins, hence making them the easiest to read.

      --
      I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
  19. Try GIMP 1.1 by Cassandra · · Score: 1

    As much as I would like to have better screens, I don't think merely higher resolution will solve the problem of viewing a hi-res image all at once without loosing resolution. In fact, you eye cannot see full detail on all of a 17" screen at once anyway, you have to change gaze (lots of times) to see all details.

    GIMP 1.1 has a very nice feature that makes panning of large images a very pleasant experience :-). It gives you a small pop-up showing the entire image at lower resolution, and lets you move around the region of interest in the miniature with the mouse. If you have enough RAM is actually quite quick, even on large images.

    BTW I also work with large images: aerial photograph databases which I probably never will be able to see on screen at full detail at once :-)

    1. Re:Try GIMP 1.1 by Apotsy · · Score: 1
      As much as I would like to have better screens, I don't think merely higher resolution will solve the problem of viewing a hi-res image all at once without loosing resolution. In fact, you eye cannot see full detail on all of a 17" screen at once anyway, you have to change gaze (lots of times) to see all details.

      Actually, the problem you are describing is due to the size of the image, not the resolution. If the pixels were drawn on the screen at a higher density than usual, then you would be able to see the whole image at once, without having to move your eyes around. And that extra resolution would not be wasted, since your eyes are plenty capable of resolving details at greater than the standard 72dpi or 100 dpi of a monitor (at a distance of about 18" to 20").

      --
      Free Hans!
    2. Re:Try GIMP 1.1 by Cassandra · · Score: 1

      Actually, the problem you are describing is due to the size of the image, not the resolution.

      You cannot say that it's due to the size, and not the resolution, if you are interested in actually viewing the image details. You can easily realize this, if you imagine shrinking an image to a tenth of its original size, while at the same time increasing the resolution tenfold :-)

      Yes, if we had better resolution displays, a 14" or maybe even a 12" screen could be useful, but you would have to sit closer to it.

      If the pixels were drawn on the screen at a higher density than usual, then you would be able to see the whole image at once, without having to move your eyes around.

      This would depend very much on what kind of image you are watching. It would certainly have to be a very simple one for this to be true. The human visual system only has sharp vision in 1 deg. of the visual field. This is usually about the size of a single letter in level 1 headings. This, and the limited amount of cones in the fovea limits the amount of detail you can squeeze into your image.

      And that extra resolution would not be wasted, since your eyes are plenty capable of resolving details at greater than the standard 72dpi or 100 dpi of a monitor (at a distance of about 18" to 20").

      OK, I admit that screens a little bit sharper would be beneficial, but we are not far from the limit at present, especially considering that most people don't have perfect vision.

  20. Re:I still find LCD's distracting by kenydl · · Score: 1

    I have a 14" TFT screen on my laptop + Rage LT Pro 3D card. Quake I,II and III are sharp and clear. I get far less eye strain from my LCD than i do from nearly all CRT screens.

    --
    .sig (insert funny sig here)
  21. Re:I still find LCD's distracting by coolgeek · · Score: 1

    I use an HP-FX70 LCD and it is pretty nice. It will run at 85Hz, although I run mine at 75Hz. It has an auto setup that nearly eliminates all of the phase variation (analog clock lining up with the LCD stripes) inherent with analog LCD panel. A little manual tweaking gives me a 1024x768 display that is every bit as crisp at the 14.1" on my VAIO. It also has a digital interface, but I am yet to find a reasonable card that has that connector for an Intel box. After using my VAIO on the road for a month, it was too painful to use a regular old CRT.

    --

    cat /dev/null >sig
  22. Re:Thank the Green party! Re:Sign you up? by homebru · · Score: 1

    The european greens have managed to get passed laws effecting the use and disposal of lead in 2004.

    Good. No more conventional war in Europe after 2004.

    (Next time we'll have to use bismuth.)

  23. can you imagine... by stubob · · Score: 1

    controlling a beowulf cluster with one of these?

    (hey, no one else had said it yet.)

    --
    Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
  24. 5 million pixels = by Blue+Lang · · Score: 2

    quake III @ 4 frames/second with 4 matroxes driving it.

    whee!

    --
    blue

    --
    i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
  25. Re:Who will buy this thing? by havardi · · Score: 1

    I imagine anyone working in the graphics realm of things would kill for one of these. 200dpi is getting pretty close to laser printer quality.
    it's kind of ironic that nearly everthing the Art Department prints out is only 800x600, and sometimes they even scale it up from that to get something like 60dpi on their printouts. All those lost dots per inch. *sniff* makes me sad.

  26. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by DZign · · Score: 1

    > I'm starting to see anti-aliased text as *fuzzy* rather than smoother. Go see an optician, you need (stronger ?) glasses.. But I agree, new screens and high resolutions don't always display crisp images.. I still prefer my 5yr old 15' ADI at home to the compaq tft450 I have to see at work on :-( Refresh rates and sharpness of lcd's and so aren't what they should be :-(

    --
    Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
  27. Re:Sign you up? by Coz · · Score: 2
    Oh, yeah, baby... I want it BAD.

    Ever programmed with a dual-head display? Code editor/IDE up on one, references on the other, execution on one, debugger on the other... I miss those projects....

    And the market for this will be HUGE. Once people realize what they've been settling for, how will we be able to take pride in our little .22 dot pitch 1600x1280s? Even the Trinitron doesn't come close. Price'll be a pain, but there are enough different high-fidelity applications for this kind of display (how many will Lucas order to edit SWIII on?). Not just CGI, or IBM's favorite market, CAD - artists, architects, medical folk (like the article mentioned), the defense simulation folks (I know some tank simulators that could use this upgrade).

    Of course, I'll have to sell stock to be able to afford one. :-( It still doesn't qualify as my dream workstation, but it's an improvement. (remember Stellar Cartography from Star Trek:Generations? Now THAT's a workstation!)

    --
    I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
  28. Re:Yowzers! by 11223 · · Score: 1

    This is the type of thing that takes ten years to get into the marketplace affordably. It's not a cheap thing - most of it is hardware cost that doesn't go down like that!

  29. Re:I still find LCD's distracting by ratbag · · Score: 1

    If you get the chance, take a look at the 1400x1050 screen on Dell's Inspirons. I use a 17" Trinitron at work and the LCD at home. The LCD is easier on my eyes over a period of time. YMMV

    Rob.

  30. DPI by Mike+Hicks · · Score: 1

    Something you may not know about monitors is that having a really big (CRT) screen doesn't necessarily give you the best experience. I was looking at some big Sonys (I probably won't buy one.. I don't think I'll pull in enough cash this summer) and I noticed that the huge 21" displays run at around 96dpi (even at 2048x1536 resolution). However, the monitor I have right now (15", probably about 14" viewable) runs at 1320x992 and has a dpi of about 118. This means that my display can give me crisper text (though I can't fit as much of it on the same size display).

    200+ dpi would rock.
    --
    Ski-U-Mah!
    Stop the MPAA

  31. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by Woody77 · · Score: 1

    LCD Projectors make this easy. I was looking at getting an apartment with a vaulted cieling. I could have had 1024x768 at 10' square, or TV at the same size... Apartment was too much though...

    Done this at work a few times, in conference rooms. It's fun!

  32. Re:I still find LCD's distracting by Stephen+Samuel · · Score: 2
    I worked at a medical imaging company and some of the advantages of online X-rays include the ability to bring up file images quickly, view them anywhere/anywhen (including remotely -- Units were installed in places like Bosnia for remote diagnostics). It's also possible to do things like false-color images.

    There are also monetary benefits like film costs and manpower spent hunting and transporting film. And storage: consider how many images you can fit on a raid array, then calculate how much space that would take up in plastic and paper files.

    --
    Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
  33. Re:Sign you up? by hobbs · · Score: 1

    >Ever programmed with a dual-head display?
    >Code editor/IDE up on one, references on the
    >other, execution on one, debugger on the
    >other... I miss those projects....

    What's wrong with multiple virtual screens? Does anybody really run without that nowadays? I don't even run Windows without a virtual window manager. Sure I'd never say no if the boss were to offer me the Roentgen monitor, but I can make do with my 21" trinitron and virtual screens for quite a while. $10K is quite a hefty price, and I manage to make the space for a CRT still.

  34. Re:Calculations (aka What?) by LS · · Score: 1

    The article mentioned that the production model would be able to display two 8.5x11 pages. Maybe the production model will be more than 2560x2048 pixels.

    --
    There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
  35. Re:Interesting way to drive those displays.... by dublin · · Score: 2

    Don't know if it's still true, since I've been away from the medical imaging business since leaving Sun (they *own* the OEM medical imaging market), but most of the med imaging vendors were using the X Inside (now Xi Graphics) X server to do this sort of thing. It has support for all kinds of high-end imaging hardware. I'd suspect they're still doing this, since it's not exactly the easiest thing for the uninitiated to jump into - there are some really arcane things to know for performance and fidelity. (And radiologists are to displays what the snobbiest audiophile is to stereo gear - they have very well-calibrated eyeballs...)

    BTW: Imaging is very different from graphics. This was one of the revolutionary things about Sun's UPA/VIS architecture in the mid-90's: it was the first affordable graphics susbsystem that did a pretty respectable job at both. Previously serious users had to choose which they wanted and select their hardware accordingly.

    --
    "The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last ./ post
  36. How much further can it go? by Chris+Worth · · Score: 2

    Raises a point of how big/hi-res is enough?

    I'm sitting at a 26inch monitor with 1280x1024, which is a fair bit of 'bandwidth to the eyes'. But a lot of the time, I'm designing the site I'm working on using the wall behind - a 'screen' of 2 x 4 metres, with enough 'resolution' to fit 20 closely typed pages across its width.

    I think it doesn't top out for a long time yet...

    --
    - Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
  37. GigaPixel SchmigaPixel! by tofus · · Score: 1

    Duh! instead of developing large LCD-screen technology, i'm working on small LCD-screen technology. So far, i already have a display that is able to display one monochrome pixel. I call this display 'LED'. Wanna try it?

  38. Bad name. by Mr.+Neutron · · Score: 1
    I'm sorry, but considering all of the concerns about monitor radiation emmision, is it really prudent to name a display after the X-Ray?

    --
    "How many six year olds does it take to design software?"

    --
    dinner: it's what's for beer
  39. 200 pixel per inch ? by renoX · · Score: 1

    How do you get that number?

    The pixel grid is 2560*2048 colored pixel.
    The display size is 21 inches * 16.5 inches.

    This make about 120 colored pixel per inch.

    Are they speaking about 200 mono-colored (Red or Green or Blue) per inch or am I missing something?

    Still these display must really be impressive to see, the sad point is that they won't become affordable anytime soon.. Bah!

    1. Re:200 pixel per inch ? by Spire · · Score: 1

      Your calculations are essentially correct, but unnecessarily complicated.

      We already know from IBM that the diagonal of the viewable display area is 16.3". All we need to do is calculate the number of pixels on this diagonal (sqrt(2560^2 + 2048^2) = ~3278.4), and divide that by 16.3", to get 201.1 ppi.
      --

      --
      begin 644 .sig22&%I;"P@9F5L;&]W(&=E96 LA`end
    2. Re:200 pixel per inch ? by philipsblows · · Score: 1
      From http://www.research.ibm.com/roentgen/ (linked above somewhere)

      Screen size is 16.5 inches DIAGONAL

      Assumeing a 4x3 ratio (which may be incorrect, they don't appear to give the dimensions other than diagonal), and using the Pythagorean theorem

      (4x)^2 + (3x)^2 = (16.5)^2

      x=3.3

      Screen dimensions 13.2"x9.9"

      2560/13.2 ~= 193.9 ppi
      2048/9.9 ~= 206.8 ppi
      Average of those two (truncated) values
      200.35ppi

      Good enough for marketing...

      They use pixels/inch in the description, and give all horizontal references to XGA, SXGA, etc, in pixels, not dots, which would be horizontal pixels x 3 for RGB.

      So there you go.

    3. Re:200 pixel per inch ? by philipsblows · · Score: 1
      Whoops, make that 16.3" diagonal

      x=3.26

      2560/13.04 ~= 196.3 ppi
      2048/9.9 ~= 209.4 ppi
      Avg 202.85 ppi

      Also, they do give the physical dimensions of the PROTOTYPE, which must include the glass overhang, sheet metal enclosure, plastic, and whathaveyou. Either way, they (IBM) say specifically at the website I referenced

      • 200 ppi 16.3 inch Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display
      • diagonal viewing area

      If there's one thing monitor manufacturers know to tell us now, it is the viewable area, which is not the same as monitor dimensions...

  40. Why four display adatpers? by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 1

    I'm trying to decide why they need four display adapters. The G400 can drive 2048x1536 at 32-bit on one head, so 2048x2560 should be a job for two heads, right?

    1. Re:Why four display adatpers? by Emil+Brink · · Score: 2

      Thinking about the same thing, I did some simple calculation on bandwidth requirements... 2560x2048 is (as stated) 5Mpixels (using M to mean 1<<20, as in MB). At 32 bits per pixel, that's 20 MB per frame. If we want to display that at 60 Hz, that's a rather hefty 1.2 GB per second bandwidth requirement. One way to ease that is to split the frame buffer across multiple cards, since each frame buffer then only needs to deal with a fraction (here, a fourth, or 300 MBps) of the bandwidth. Reservation: 60 Hz might be more than an LCD uses, so the above figures could be off by a factor of 2 or so. Still, I think there's a problem here.

      If you want to do full-screen 3D graphics (which seems to be high on everybody's wish list, judging from the number of drooling references to Q3 among the posts here :), you do not want your display to "steal" 1.2 GBps of the available bandwidth. You want to use that bandwidth to blast pixels to the screen, read textures and Z-buffer values, etc. It's unclear what the solution to this might be. You could go the route of Bitboys, and embed the frame buffer in the display core, thus giving wide busses and huge (they mention 12 GBps) bandwidth. However, embedded DRAM currently limits the amount of memory in the frame buffer rather strictly. Bitboys talk about 9 MB, which in the case of the Roentgen wouldn't even allow double buffering the entire screen (remember, each screenful requires 5 MB)... My point, then? Um, I don't know. Memory bandwidth is a hairy thing, or something. Good luck to all engineers involved! ;^)
      --
      main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
    2. Re:Why four display adatpers? by Emil+Brink · · Score: 1

      Never do math (even with the help of the excellent grpn calculator) late in the afternoon. Since every frame is 20 MB, 9 MB is clearly not even enough for a single frame, so never mind the mention of double buffering above. Thanks.

      --
      main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
  41. Dot on the i? by havardi · · Score: 2

    is a single pixel? why is that cool? the dot's on my 'i's are a single pixel right now. They should have said something like "The dot on this 'i' here is 17 pixels!" that would indicate a higher resolution, or at least a bigger font.

  42. Re:Calculations (aka What?) by dublin · · Score: 2

    Good question. I was wondering the same thing - the math doesn't work.

    In any case, this is still *much* less than what will be required if we're ever to get usable interfaces. Even at 2 A-size sheets at a decent resolution, it's still tiny: A quick look around the stuff on my desk reveals 10 roughly A-size documents "open" and the corners of several others peeking out. The surrounding work area and walls have another severl pages available for reference.

    So for $10,000, you can get a tiny fraction of the bandwidth of my standard-issue IBM desk. Killing trees isn't going to slow anytime soon until computer desktop bandwidth approaches or exceeds that of the physical desktop. Until then, I'll keep printing out the things I'm working on.

    Really, though, this is a real problem - computers simply can't be really useful until they have big screens so we can stop trying to drive the freeway while looking at the world through a knothole. This is the sort of thing we should put all those extra CPU cycles to. Thank you, Gordon Moore.

    --
    "The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last ./ post
  43. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by GossG · · Score: 1
    Lotsa dots means never having to say "anti-aliased text". I used to use a 3 pixel wide font on my C64 because I was dialling into systems expecting more resolution.I modemmed for years using a CGA display. (My employer had leased lines to the big city, but only one modem).

    I first looked at anto-aliased text on an ATI card my boss was using in 1992. I hated it. When my eye couldn't reliably pick up the edges of the characters, I tired of reading in a few minutes. Meanwhile, back at my own desk, I can read for hours. I was in my bosses office because he wanted my opinion on whether his monitor needed to be serviced. We turned off the ATI feature and kept the monitor.

    I feel the same about the demo of Gibson's anti-aliasong product at www.grc.com. The after image is soft and fuzzy and halfway unreadable.

    My eye will learn to ignore aliasing in a font within a few hours. I never learn to see edges of characters that have been deliberately hidden, and without edges, the font becomes unreadable

  44. Re:I love LCD by shandrew · · Score: 1
    The only reason I haven't switched to LCD for my desktop is that I don't know of any quality digital switches, so all my computers can share it

    Here's one: http://www.drbott.com/prod/MSDVI.html
    Since it's a digital interface, quality is not a huge issue, like it is with analog video switchboxes/cables.

  45. nice, thanks by Tom7 · · Score: 1

    > Since it's a digital interface, quality is not a
    > huge issue, like it is with analog video
    > switchboxes/cables.

    You're absolutely right; I guess what I meant to say is "I can't find a digital switch". Good call! It doesn't have quite PC support I'd hope for, but it looks pretty good.

    With one of these I wouldn't have to upgrade all my video cards: http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2000/ju ne/multilink.html

    Now all I need is $5000... ;)

  46. Re:New Monitors Bring New Way of Visualization by imroy · · Score: 1

    Look at the processor speed race. Soon we'll see a 1.4GHz Pentium IV processor, but apart from being able to finish a SETI work unit in 2 hours (I'm guessing)

    2 hours? pphhhtt!
    Look at the platform stats - there are Alpha machines (at DEC/Compaq?) that finish a unit in around an hour. I remember one used to be around 56 minutes, but I can't see it there. And these are probably 600Mhz (650?) 21264 processors. Intel still has a long way to go :)

    ObSlashdot: Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
    (actually, we don't have to imagine, do we?)

  47. Re:even better by CIHMaster · · Score: 1

    Sure didn't sound like it because Cleartype is a valid technology that could possibly have a purpose here, aside from the fact that text doesn't carry tone that well :)

  48. I want to see this tech in a PDA/web pad by Trongy · · Score: 1

    I would like to see a paperback book sized screen with the same 200 dpi technology. Then a portable device for reading e-texts might suddenly be a killer app. As it is, reading from any current screen technology for a length of time causes me far more eyestrain. Put this density of screen in one of those transmeta prototype web pads and you have a killer combination in my opinion.

    Chris

  49. Yes, but with less detail... by GeekLife.com · · Score: 2

    Slashdot Article - December 13th
    IBM Fact Sheet linked in Slashdot Article
    -----

  50. Re:I still find LCD's distracting by angelo · · Score: 1

    LCDs are subject to ghosting of images due to the relitively slow speed of liquid crystal. This is similar to slow phosphors on an old TV. But in the case of TV this actually helps the persistence of vision. With LCD you are running 60Hz refresh, and even turning your head will catch the update. This also happens with slower CRT monitors.

    Also, keep in mind that this display is for viewing of X-Rays and other mostly still data. It is still a somewhat poor substitute to the original, but the ability to write on the X-ray without damage, plus the instant development of X-ray streams would be an added benefit. I think the latter already exists in some lab, but I'd also wager it is quite expensive. The former is great for keeping layers of notes.

    Just don't expect any "TekWar" video-tables anytime soon :(

    --
    Lowmag.net
  51. After Phytagore by mirko · · Score: 1

    SQRT(21^2+16.5^2)
    This makes a 70cm diag. screen (26.7 inch monitor).
    If this can sound good to play Civilization (is the refresh quick enough for Quake ?), this is just a little slow to watch DVD.
    What about its consummation, especially compared to previous laptops ?
    Do IBM intend to make big (I mean tall, not necessarily revolutionary) laptop using these ?
    --

    --
    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  52. Forget huuuuge displays... lets have ickle ones by grahamsz · · Score: 4

    Have a look at some of this stuff on very small (still quite high resolution) and very fast refreshing FLCOS displays. They have a 1024x768 display which is only 12.3x9.2 mm in size!!

    Rather than trying to have complicated pixels from what I can make of it they build up colours by simply flashing the primary colours at you in different proportions, and with frame rates in the kHz bracket it looks very interesting.

  53. Re:Same factory as Thinkpad displays... by fluffhead · · Score: 5

    Not unless you want to be hauling around a car battery with your now huge, 25 pound laptop....

    Roentgen features:


    200 ppi 16.3 inch Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display
    diagonal viewing area
    2560x2048 pixels (5,242,880 full color pixels)
    Subpixels are 42 x 126 microns
    15,728,640 transistors
    1.64 miles of thin film wiring on the display
    Aperture ratio of 27.3%
    Backlight power of 44 Watts
    The smallest feature is 5 microns
    The prototype is 21 inches high and 16.5 inches wide, the total depth (including base) is 9.5 inches,
    the thickness of the display is 2.5 inches
    The weight is approximately 20 pounds
    The power dissipated by the new display is similar to the power used by an 18-inch CRT display.

    Not quite ready for mobile applications, apparently (even if they used a TransMeta proc) ;-)



    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
    --

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  54. Re:I still find LCD's distracting by Pfhor · · Score: 1

    I can speak from experience, as LCDs are too bad. I use one exclusivly on my powerbook, and quake is not a blue of pixels. Also, my system considers my LCD as having no refresh rate. My display suffers from some color shifting (worse part of any LCD display) but other than that, I love it. I just wish I have a Cinema Display I could plug it into when I came home every night (well, actually a magma cardbus -> pci bridge, containing a DVI outpot enabled video card, but whose counting?)

  55. Re:FIST post by Vishak · · Score: 1

    I want to feed the troll

    --
    Intelligent Design Theory is not Creationism
  56. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by Andrej+Marjan · · Score: 1
    Hear hear, though it's especially true for the crap Compaq ships. Even when they take good underlying technology, like trinitron, they make it the dimmest monitor ever built (P75), or they ship a 19" (S900) with an alleged .26 dpi that looks more like .38.

    I do like my big Viewsonic, though. It all boils down to quality: if you buy a cheap $200 17" or 19", you should expect it to ruin your eyes. Period.
    --
    Change is inevitable.

    --
    Change is inevitable.
    Progress is not.
  57. New Monitors Bring New Way of Visualization by dmccarty · · Score: 2
    I believe we'll start to see more announcements like these are research into visualization techniques progresses. Look at the processor speed race. Soon we'll see a 1.4GHz Pentium IV processor, but apart from being able to finish a SETI work unit in 2 hours (I'm guessing), it doesn't bring anything new to the table. No matter how fast you make the processor, it's still just pushing around 1's and 0's very quickly.

    Not so with monitors. The field is wide open--and overripe, if Sci-fi movie special effects have anything to say about it--for a revoluionary change in the way we view data. Whether it's a 50" flat-screen or a CAVE environment or a holographic projecton, I think things are going to start changing. And it will start changing the way we see things.
    --

    --
    Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
  58. Good for astronomy by ChrisDolan · · Score: 3

    This is something I've been looking forward to for a while. In my astronomy research, I usually work with images from digital cameras with 2048x2048 pixel resolution. Even with my 1280x1024 monitor, I either have to shrink the image (losing detail) or do a lot of panning to see the whole thing. A monitor more closely matched to the image size would help.

    As consumer digital cameras approach 2048x2048 resolution, I'm sure graphic artists will start to want high-end monitors like this one, too.

    However current top-end astronomy CCDs are using chips of up to 4096x4096 pixels and new cameras are using arrays of 2-16 of these large format chips. This spring I worked on some data from an 8192x8192 mosaic imager and, boy, was it hard to work with images shrunk by a factor of 8x8 to make them fit on my current-generation screen!

  59. Yah - too friggin big is too friggin big by gelfling · · Score: 1

    I gave away a P200 a P201, two P72's and G72. The display on my notebook is fine. Half my office is filled with the three glass monitors, P70 and G70 that are left. It's nice that they're 17+" each and I'm sure the people @ home would want one but...

  60. Re:And for reference? by sopwath · · Score: 1

    can you really put a price on such a godly monitor? I mean yeah it's $300K, but jesus christ would be drooling over that.

  61. Apple's secret weapon? by abe1x · · Score: 1

    Remember reading that a big problem with displays with this sort of pixels per inch was rendering old programs that used pixels as their main measurement. Everything is rendered too small to read. Obviously there are workarounds, but it seems like OSX for the mac will have a big advantage. Don't know all the specs, but I believe its graphics engine, Quartz, is vector based, with built in scalibility at no loss of image quality.

    --
    Abstract Dynamics
  62. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by jafuser · · Score: 1

    Hear hear, though it's especially true for the crap Compaq ships.
    [...]
    It all boils down to quality: if you buy a cheap $200 17" or 19", you should expect it to ruin your eyes.

    You should re-read your reply in this context. I have a Compaq P110 21" at work and it is an excellent monitor. I'll probably never spend that much on a monitor for home, but it's a damn nice monitor. If a consumer or business spends $200 for a 17" or 19" Compaq monitor, I imagine most of the people who use the monitor will assume all Compaq monitors are crap.

    Then again, if I were Compaq and I were selling crappy monitors cheap, I'd probably not put my brand name in an obvious spot on them.

    --
    Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
  63. Re:even better by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 1

    It was sarcasm...

    --
    Do you have ESP?
  64. I WANT ONE by redden · · Score: 1

    well....I dont know if the bank will approve me for a loan THAT big...

    --
    Lars, I just wanted you to know I found myself humming Master of Puppets in the shower, how much do I owe you?
  65. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by pdxChris · · Score: 1

    If you prefer a crisp, low resolution screen, then you'd enjoy Color Forth as described by Chuck Moore at http://www.ultratechnology.com/fsc98.htm.
    It's part of his overall "low fat computing" project to return to the simplest possible form of computing (which happens to include some very sophisticated, elegant ideas). By the way, Chuck thinks useful programs may some day exceed 1 KB. :-)
    - Chris

  66. Uh? You misread the article, I think. by renoX · · Score: 1

    No, I've read it again and they are talking about the prototypes for both the number of pixel and the display size.

  67. Calculations (aka What?) by Paul+Carver · · Score: 3

    200 ppi

    2560" x 2048"
    21" x 16.5"
    two 8.5" x 11" side by side

    2560/21=121.9 ppi
    2048/16.5 =124.1 ppi

    two 8.5" x 11" side by side = 11" x 17" portrait or 8.5" by 22" landscape

    21" x 16.5" is slightly less than four 8.5" x 11" pages in a 2x2 grid.

    So what are the real specs on this monitor?

  68. Thank the Green party! Re:Sign you up? by mr · · Score: 1

    The european greens have managed to get passed laws effecting the use and disposal of lead in 2004.

    So, there is an economic incentive to push LCD's.

    So the prices WILL drop. You just have to wait.

    --
    If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
  69. do the math by davonds · · Score: 1

    Their numbers don't add up, given the measurments of their display, I get only 121 ppi, at 200 ppi their monitor would only be 12" by 10".

  70. Reality Center reality by Shickdawg · · Score: 1

    Beyond the comments on price, ($300k being a *low* quote) there are other problems with this thing. I was at SGI having this thing pitched to me and my boss. To get a nice threen-screen image, you need something like an SGI Onyx2 or Octane with multiple graphics pipes. Otherwise, it turns into three individual screens.

    The sucker's got three Barco projectors in back, so you can get some sweet stereo graphics going though.....

  71. Re:And for reference? by Pathwalker · · Score: 2

    No - that's just nice - this is godly!
    --
    Email address is real.

  72. Re:even better by CIHMaster · · Score: 1

    at 200dpi with vector based fonts, you don't need cleartype, because your resolution is high enough to create smooth edges by sheer pixel count. Of course, until Windows or X gets a vector based UI, you'll be typing in 72 point fonts (which interestingly, would be about the size of a 16 point font on a 200dpi monitor!)

  73. Re:And for reference? by antic · · Score: 1

    Are you talking about the Studio or Cinema Display? I believe that Sony have a monitor which will do 1800x1550 (2.8M pixels) for about AU$2300 (under US$1400 surely). For $4k, you could run two of them with a G400 DualHead and get a monster res.

    I run my G400 over a 21" and 15" at 2560x1024. According to the Matrox site, you can hook up to 9 monitors under Win98 (4 or so under NT or something like that) using a bunch of G400's. As soon as I have the money, I'll be trying out 5120x1024.

    Must. Get. More. Pixels.

    Funnily enough, my kitten's name is Pixel (seriously, I can't get enough pixels...). He sleeps on the 21" - so I guess my res is 2560x1025... That extra one Pixel vertically makes all the difference. ;)

    --
    'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
  74. $10,000? WHo are they kidding... by Philtho · · Score: 1

    Granted the prototype might cost this much, but like HDTVs, the materials once they build a production line will most likely run them a few hundred dollars, if that. I wish these people would try and market these things to people who would actually want to buy them rather than selling a few of them across the world to Hospitals and such...

    --

    I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!

    1. Re:$10,000? WHo are they kidding... by WhiskeyJack · · Score: 2

      The cost of the materials that goes into one monitor is less of a factor than the number of monitors that come off the production line flawed, and need to be discarded. We're dealing with the fabrication of tens of millions of microscopic components here, and if even a handfull of them are botched in production, the resulting monitor panel will be unsaleable. When someone pays $10000 for one of these flat panel displays, they're paying not only for the display they got, but for the X number of displays that (on average) came off the line too flawed to sell.

      -- WhiskeyJack

  75. Re:Yowzers! by wnissen · · Score: 2

    They had a prototype of this thing at IBM almost a year ago. It took them a full year to announce it as a product, i.e., to put it into industrial production. Somehow I think it unlikely that they will halve the price after putting in a full year of production development and who knows how many years of research.

    Walt

  76. Finally... by Niko. · · Score: 1

    Windows users can get their dialog boxes in the middle of a double-wide screen and not centered between two screens. LOL.

  77. And for reference? by FascDot+Killed+My+Pr · · Score: 3

    What does a "godly" monitor do?
    --

    --
    Linux MAPI Server!
    http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
    (Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
    1. Re:And for reference? by Chelloveck · · Score: 1

      From SGI's FAQ:

      Q. How much does a complete, fully integrated SGI Reality Center solution cost?
      A.The cost is variable, depending upon the size of your facility and your need for custom applications development. SGI Reality Center facilities, complete with installation and integration, start at under U.S. $300,000.
      --
      Chelloveck
      I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
    2. Re:And for reference? by 11223 · · Score: 1

      A godly monitor is an PalmPilot display. Anything else is "ungodly".

    3. Re:And for reference? by imac.usr · · Score: 2
      Here is one godly version of this monitor.

      --
      I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
    4. Re:And for reference? by NetJunkie · · Score: 1

      I saw that monitor at a show a little while back. VERY nice. They were showing the desktop and playing Bugs Life on it from DVD.

    5. Re:And for reference? by dvduijn · · Score: 1
      It's godly, so it sould be able to do everything.

      And for just $10.000 it can be yours! Now that's a bargain.

    6. Re:And for reference? by British · · Score: 1

      Why didn't they put that monitor on a more solid base? I'd be afraid of having it accidentally knocked over with its legs.

  78. Talk about a killer idea... by Animol · · Score: 2

    IBM outta team up with these guys - Can you imagine a monster-res 3d monitor? Kinda leaves this whole "real world" thing in the dust!

    --

    "I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
  79. Starting to prefer small monitors by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 5

    I don't know if it comes from using PDAs and emulators for 8-bit home computers, but I'm actually starting to prefer lowish resolutions on small monitors. Maybe it's just the realization that I'm usually staring at a small window in the center of a large, expensive, EMF emitting monitor. Along the same lines, I'm starting to see anti-aliased text as *fuzzy* rather than smoother. I was using an Atari 800 emulator the other day, believe it or not, I really got into the sharp, chunky feel of the text.

    1. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by Delphis · · Score: 1

      I still prefer my 5yr old 15' ADI at home

      I know you meant 15" .. but wouldn't a 15' monitor be amusing?...

      Quake3, Half-Life - AT LIFE SIZE :) ... imagine that taking up one side of your 'gaming barn' (sounds like a fun idea in itself) ..

      Of course the graphics resolution to drive such a thing so it wasn't a big chunky mess would have to be amazing..

      Cool..

      --

      --
      Delphis
    2. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by wbraunoh · · Score: 1

      If you ever get the chance, check out the club "FUN" in New York City, underneath the Manhattan bridge. They play movies on the TALL walls there, as well as Playstation, Dreamcast, etc. It's a riot playing the new version of Frogger when Frogger is approximately 4 feet tall. Gotta love it.

    3. Re:Starting to prefer small monitors by dmccarty · · Score: 1
      Along the same lines, I'm starting to see anti-aliased text as *fuzzy* rather than smoother.

      Get your eyes checked. ;-)
      --

      --
      Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
  80. I still find LCD's distracting by georgeha · · Score: 4

    They still seem slow to me, especially when dragging a window around.

    I have the chance to play with a Sun Enterprise rackmount server with a flat panel LCD, it sure is nift looking, but the slow refresh rate is to distracting.

    I imagine doing Quake or Doom on this would be lackluster, jsut a bunch of smeared pixels.

    Are they every going to make the refresh rate better?

    George

    1. Re:I still find LCD's distracting by mattACK · · Score: 1

      I have been watching DVDs and playing Deus Ex on my Toshiba Tecra 8100 for days now. Works like a champ. You'd have to see it to believe it. Funny side note: support for Linux is better than support for W2K for the video chipset.

      --


      "My God, this must be a truly remarkable corn chip, to be so widely and confidently touted."
  81. Sign you up? by 11223 · · Score: 3
    Do you really think that you could afford one of these babies? I don't think that VA is paying you that much...

    That much said, expect around a decade before this technology works it down to a price point such that you can buy it, cheaply. Right now it's mainly for kick-ass CAD, which IBM has been targeting very heavily with its workstations recently.

    Personally, I think the best part of this is the fact that Matrox gets attention out of it - they never seem to get as much attention as they should!

  82. Yummy by theluckman · · Score: 1
    mmmmmm.... urge to sell my truck and buy unreasonably large and expensive monitor... rising


    luckman

    --
    luckman
    I don't involve myself with flames, much less know how to bait one.
  83. Same factory as Thinkpad displays... by ca1v1n · · Score: 1

    I wonder how much I'd have to bribe someone to "accidentally" put one of these on my thinkpad? Less than $10k maybe?

    --
    WARNING: there is a trojan on your
  84. Token bitch/moan about XFree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Still don't even have dual display support in XF86 -- why bother? I also like the way bitmapped fonts turn completely illegible at higher resolutions... yum.

  85. Re:Boycott IBM! by ^_^x · · Score: 1

    Awesome! I remember a page like that from years ago, but it disappeared!

    ... "Hydric Acid"... hee hee hee. ^o^

  86. Dare I Say it? by Cannonball · · Score: 2

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of....wait a minute...it practically NEEDS a Beowulf cluster to RUN it.

    --
    So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
  87. I love LCD by Tom7 · · Score: 3

    I've played Quake on my Vaio's LCD, and it's the best picture I've ever had (better than my Trinitron, yes). Even at 10"! It's also a lot, lot more comfortable to stare at all day. There are bad LCDs, yes, but try out some new ones...

    The only reason I haven't switched to LCD for my desktop is that I don't know of any quality digital switches, so all my computers can share it.

  88. MacOS X by BrotherPope · · Score: 1

    While many of us will claim to have some use for this (like one big 'ol emacs window, or lots of xterms), it's quite clear that we are nowhere near ready for this kind of resolution. This got me thinking about MacOS X again and how a pdf-like display layer could really help this technology take off, by providing a fully scalable desktop experience. Of course, the current implementation of MacOS X may be ill-suited for this kind of thing, but they would certainly have an easier time adapting.
    So the question to ponder is 'how are we planning for the display technologies of the future?', while glancing over your shoulder to see Roentgen catching up fast.

  89. Good for microscopy too by squeakphd · · Score: 1

    They also said that the older model used 4 video cards and had 4 cables running to it. That's actually more appealing to me than the single-cable version. This would be a nice screen to hook up to 4 different boxes and have them all displayed simultaneously, rather than have a switchbox to one monitor.

  90. I'm a little skeptical... by sphealey · · Score: 2

    I must say I am a little skeptical. About every 2 years, for the past 10 years or so, there has been an announcement from some lab concerning a breakthrough in display technology (the last one I heard about was from TI and was going to provide 300dpi on a 20' screen). None of these technologies has ever come to market; we are still pretty much stuck with big tubes or expensive (and somewhat slow) LCD's.

    Now, I would love to see a breakthrough in technology and to have a 1200 dpi display device (other than paper that is ;-) ). But forgive me if I don't believe it until I see it at Circuit City at a price of less than 1000 USD.

    sPh

  91. Dude... by Seumas · · Score: 1
    "Where'd that third eye in the middle of your forehead come from?"

    "It grew while I was playing Q3 on that new kick-ass IBM monitor!"
    ---
    seumas.com

  92. Interesting way to drive those displays.... by Watts · · Score: 3

    It's sort of interesting that they're using the four-head Matrox boards to power these things.
    While consumers are now seeing boards that have output for two monitors from Matrox, according to a friend of mine, Matrox makes a lot of specialty boards like the one mentioned. Some of the four screen models are used in financial institutions or somesuch.

    As for the technology driving it, it's a massive board (or combination of boards) powered by the G200 chipset. Matrox may be making these based on the G400 (or even G450) by now, but I'm not sure.

    IBM must be using some sort of tiling scheme to display the stuff. xinerema in hardware? :)

  93. For a starting price not less than $10k! by Sonicboom · · Score: 1

    I'll stick to my .26 dot pitch viewsonic flatscreen monitor.... at least for a few years!

    I could think of alot of other things to spend $10,000 on....

    --
    [Connection closed by foreign host]
  94. Blurb at IBM Research Site by CalmCoolCollected · · Score: 5

    Roentgen

  95. hello America?? by tallbloke · · Score: 1

    big enough for 2 11" x 8" pages eh?

    Nice.

    Pity most of the rest of the world's using I.S.O. standard A4 for documents then.

    We'll all just have to scroll around a bit to see the edges eh?

  96. Looks cool, but what's with the name? by El+Puerco+Loco · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure i would want to sit too close to a monitor with a name like Roentgen.
    ^. .^

  97. More than just resolution is needed by ballestra · · Score: 1
    I too hope that LCD's will be as easy on the eyes as paper, someday, but they will need more than just higher resolution.

    Paper offers much better contrast without glare. Reading on white paper is easy on the eyes because you are only seeing reflected ambient light, and if the paper has a nice texture, the reflected light is diffused. Notice that it's harder to read text on glossy paper when you have undiffused light in the room, like overhead fluorescent lighting, because of the reflected glare.

    LCD screens are better than CRT's, but the light is still radiating out at us. Black text on white can be too bright sometimes. I find it easier to read black text on a medium grey background.

  98. Re:if only.... - fractal compression by arnie_apesacrappin · · Score: 1
    Hasn't there been some work with fractal compression algorithms for photographic images? I seem to recall a few years ago a Windows demo of fractal image compression (I think it was Iterated Systems, but they don't seem to be doing it anymore) - you could zoom in, zoom out, and still get quite good quality as you zoomed in - less pixellation and artifacting.

    I did some research on fractal compression a while back. The thing with the "good quality" that you get when zooming in is that it becomes artificial after a while. Because of the algorithm, you will always get more detail whenever you zoom in. The problem lies in the amount of detail (information) that was available when the image was created.

    Most fractal compression schemes convert images from some sort of pixilated image to begin with. The algorithm does allow the display to estimate (approximate) what would be at some point in the image at some level of detail, but it isn't "real" if the resolution is much higher than the original image.

    What might be cool is a fractal system to capture images originally (like a fractal scanner or digital camera). Then the added benefits of the algorithm might have more meaning.

    --

    Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP

  99. But it's $10,000 by Animats · · Score: 2
    This is Yet Another Big Overpriced Flat Panel. There are lots of those. Really Big Displays with Really Big Price Tags have been around for a while now. Visit any trade show.

    When somebody can get the price of this thing down to around $2000, that's news.

  100. Just the thing... by fm6 · · Score: 1

    ...to go with your SGI Onyx2, which is basically an Origin Supercomputer with a bunch of graphic adapters (which SGI prefers to call "rendering subsystems" or "pipes"). Since Onyx2's often have 16 pipes (with a gig of texture ram!), you would need to buy 4 of these LCD displays. Yeah, that's a lot of cash, but only a fraction of the cost of the Onyx2!

  101. 4 stripes... by chuckw · · Score: 1

    4 stripes? Cool. If they left it that way, you could actually get 4 machines displaying to the same monitor at the same time without any hokey software. With some virtual terminal software you could also probably use the same mouse and keyboard for all of them (I saw this done once with an array of monitors).
    --
    Quantum Linux Laboratories - Accelerating Business with Linux
    * Education
    * Integration
    * Support

    --
    *Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
  102. One thing I'd like to know... by the_olo · · Score: 2

    How will this influence pricing of conventional LCD screens by different manufacturers? And will IBM licence this technology to other companies so we will see for example Toshiba notebooks with ultra-high res screens? How about viewing angle of these displays? Is it the same as in ordinary TFT?

    OK. That's more than one thing I'd like to know.

  103. Yowzers! by meckardt · · Score: 2

    I'm drooling already, even though I won't be able to afford such a thing for at least a year. But in the way of everything electronic, today $10,000, next year $4000, year after $1000, and in three years, they're giving them away ('cause the things are obsolete).


    Gonzo
  104. This has been mentioned before by Raleel · · Score: 3

    I did a search and couldn't come up with it, but this was mentioned before. I know I did once as well, in a report on supercomputing 99 as a comment to a comdex/las vegas 99 report. I played with it a little. The resolution is insane...they showed a map of a 20 mile x 20 mile area of new york as part of the demo. Every single street was displayed. They pointed out the dot on an i of one word and said that was a single pixel. It is really truly nuts, but the graphics head to go along with it is mighty pricy ;)

    --
    -- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
  105. even better by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 2

    Hopefully they can use that new Microsoft ClearType technology to make the text look better.

    --
    Do you have ESP?