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NASA's Hyperwall 7'x7' LCD display

Posted by timothy on from the 64-million-pixels dept.

Doppler00 writes "I thought this was a unique use of off-the-shelf technologies. NASA is using NVidia Geforce 4 video cards, AthlonMP processors, and Red Hat Linux 7.3 to create a super computing system to display 'up to six dimensions'." Press-releasy, but worth reading if you want to imagine the rec room of the future ;)

18 comments

  1. In related news. by Neck_of_the_Woods · · Score: 3, Funny


    We have contracted out the services of Libert to supply us with a 20 unit array of Air Condition Units to keep this "HyberWall" HyperCool. After completion we found the cooling of this monstrosity was more than the wall itself.

    To quote the last words of the Project Head "Hey where do we plug this in at?".

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    Neck_of_the_Woods
    #/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
    1. Re:In related news. by Jack+Schitt · · Score: 1

      why not just use a high res projector instead? seriously now, they're nasa. they can afford it...

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    2. Re:In related news. by SparkMan · · Score: 1

      1) because projectors are a pain to keep in good working order

      2) far lower resolution than this wall thingy

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      -- laws are the opinions of politicians --

    3. Re:In related news. by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      3. Must be in the dark.
      4. Can't walk in front without casting shadow/being blinded.
      5. Uses more floor space.
      6. Project bulb needs more frequent replacement than LCD screens (not recommended to run them 24/7)

      All in all, a projector just feels less space-age than 3 meters of LCD pixels.

  2. Six whole dimensions... by Palshife · · Score: 1

    to create a super computing system to display 'up to six dimensions'

    So lets see, that's length, breadth, depth, time, hyperspace and, oh hell, what's that last one again? At any rate, should be cool. Now all they'll need is someone with a brain that can simultaneously comprehend them.

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    Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
    1. Re:Six whole dimensions... by morcheeba · · Score: 2, Informative

      According to NASA Ames research scientists, the Hyperwall is extremely adept at displaying a 2D array of 3D images; thereby providing a five dimensional view.
      Somehow, I don't think dimensions quite add up that way. Especially because the 2d array reuses 2 of the dimensions used in the 3d view.

      What they are doing is drawing slices - the same way you can represent a car in 3D by displaying lots of 2D slices. Since the pictures are disjoint, it's a lot harder to interpret (that's why people are working on fly-throughs for MRI 2D slice data). Here's another article with a picture of the beast. All that power, and they use only 2 colors - argh!!

      Not content, these scientists are "currently attempting to provide a tool for interactively exploring the six dimensional electronic pair density function calculated for small molecules."
      So, the last dimension is interactivity, which can be considered time.

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      HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
  3. Disclaimer by YetAnotherAnonymousC · · Score: 1

    (universe dimension upgrade 2.5 required)

  4. Chromium by icemax · · Score: 1

    Looks like a great system to implement the Chromium project on!

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    __________
    Love conquers all... except CANCER
  5. and they can't afford... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and they can't afford shuttle replacements... why, exactly?

  6. NASA TV by reluctantengineer · · Score: 1

    Hey, they put one of those in my house I'd be willing to watch NASA TV!

  7. Linux Cluster by bryn93 · · Score: 1

    This is not a troll. I would like to build a Linux cluster of these for my back yard pool parties in the summer.
    Could someone give me some advice on how to wire these together?

    --
    In Soviet Russia your car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and you likes it....or else.
    1. Re:Linux Cluster by aaribaud · · Score: 1

      Hmm, lessee... Red wire with red wire, green wire with green wi--oops.

    2. Re:Linux Cluster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Carefully, man, carefully.

  8. Massive Porno Theatre!!! by JohnnySkidmarks · · Score: 0

    Imagine a Porno cluster of these!

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    I went to battle MC Escher but drew a blank

  9. Six dimensions and more by Caractacus+Potts · · Score: 1

    An example of a high dimensional graph would be a 3D grid of vectors, such as a weather simulation. The little arrows would appear distributed in 3D, but they could also have attributes of direction, length, and color. Obviously, they're not true dimensions, but each datum conveys a lot of info (X,Y,Z,dX,dY,dZ,T).

  10. Want to SEE the Hyperwall? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's a picture of the hyperwall in this article on the NASA Advanced Supercomputing webserver. NAS Feature Story

  11. Not too expensive... by ajkst1 · · Score: 1

    Judging by a rough calculation of the mentioned hardware alone, the entire system would cost around $64,500. This includes 100 AMD Athlon Mp 2000+ processors, 50 Tyan Tiger S2466N motherboards, 50 nVidia GeForce4 Ti4600 128 MB AGP video cards, 49 18.1" CTX LCD Flat Panel displays, and 50 network cards. I didn't even include RAM and other stuff. Including those would probably bring the cost to around $80,000.

  12. Ooooooh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well I know what I want for christmas!