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Matrox's Extio Reviewed
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Matrox isn't as dead as some of us thought. This box of tricks lets you connect four displays up to a PC that's 250 meters away. All the graphic data is sent down a fiber optic cable to the Matrox box that then connects to the screens. To the end user it feels like they're working directly on the PC, but the PC can be locked away somewhere safe."
These would be so cool for demonstrations and conventions.
I wonder how many of these cards you could fit in a single computer ?
Given the matrox [[1,2],[3,4]], compute the matrox's extio.
Looks like Matrox isn't as dead as some of us thought.
When was Matrox dead ffs? When Seagate bought them, they were one of the top HDD brands (well, for commodity OEM drives, if not known for amazing quality).
The fact that half of Matrox's utilities are producing Seagate brand drives doesn't make them dead, does it.
Matrox never went away completely - they just left the consumer market. They still sell cipsets for connecting very large numbers of monitors to computers. Dual-head is nothing to them - they do eight- and even sixteen-head chipsets. They don't handle games well, but it you just want lots of displays...
This product doesn't look suited to the consumer market, either. It looks like a solution for airport terminals or something - hide away a PC with one of their multi-head video cards and use this to carry the video to where you want people to see it.
Now we got more than $1K of equipment sitting on the desk... (according to the price on the article)
I was hoping to read about a new standard monitor connection that replaces DVI (and HDMI) with fiber.
Instead Matrox has opted to move the graphics processor out of the computer, and use a (no doubt proprietary-format) optical link between the two.
I thought IBM did this back in 1970 with twinax. I know I did this with coax for a good 500 feet in 1998 (it was a demo at a airport). Why is this news and why would you need to do this now? Is display hardware, wireless or local fiber networking that expensive that you need to buy a 10 year old solution to solve your ill planned design?
How elegant it seems to me, sending visual information in packets of light. It reminds me of seeds of some beautiful flower which instantly sprout when planted.
I wonder, if one were to send a one minute stream of uncompressed video data, would more photons be required for the transmission over the fiber, or in the final display to the user/viewer?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
As opposed to say putting the artists in a soundproof room, and the recording and PC gear in a control room.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
There are wireless KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) units that allow you to keep your computer at a distance. Just stash all your nosiy computers in one room and have the NOISY KEYBOARD AND CLICKY-CLICKY MOUSE beside a neat little KVM transceiver.
It would be nice for airport displays. A single server can drive all displays and no restrictions on video cable lengths. Apparently, it currently is one server, one video card per display. But maybe I'm mistaken.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
...lets me keep the box somewhere secure (esp. from burglars who now have two of PCs - hi, if your reading this on one of them), and lets me run a single 15m cable combining connectors for monitor, keyboard, dvd and a USB port. Then next time I'm burgled I just lose the peripherals rather than the box and hds.
As per parents parent, this device is more like $2000 but the point is that if the ebove advice is followed, the data is safe. This seems like a worthwhile device for medical companies or other IP-heavy industries where the data is worth millions.
It is also much smaller and neater than buying a lot of computers to do the same job. And with several computers driving a display each or something like that, you'd be hard pressed to make them behave as one desktop.
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
You're not the target market.
Well:
Let's hope there are more versions coming. I for one don't want to have 4 screens, but 3 (or 2) might be enough. Firewire would be nice, then I could put my computer in the closet and replace it with this little box. But as you say, $2000 is a bit much, but I'm prepared to pay about as much as I would for an excellent graphics card + cabling, so $300 maybe?
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
Instead of forking over 1200 quid for the card, take 300 of those to get a good card and use the other 900 (or less) to make the computer silent. It is possible to create a computer that doesn't generate much (audible) noise. You gotta take the right components (like, avoid those CPU fans that resemble starting jets), and you might have to make a few compromises, but it's quite possible. And it needn't mean you're taking a slower machine.
Just make sure you connect that power led. I forgot it, and that's a serious problem with my crate. I don't hear whether it's on or off...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...this is kick-ass for sound applications. You can keep a noisy eight core workstation in a separate room together with a huge drive array, and only have the interface inside your studio booth. Excellent!
Another interesting bit is that the actual graphics processor is in the Extio, not in the PC. This way rendering lag is minimized. Weird, yet cool.
.: Max Romantschuk
Matrox being dead or not dead, whatever some of us thought, at least Matrox's marketing department is able to make excellent use of the powerful /. publicity-tool "post [your product name here] as an anonymous coward".
Her vocabulary was as good as - like - whatever
With 4-8 display one PC with say 4 gigs of Ram, a 16 Port USB Hub and VMWare. You have 1/4-1/2 of of a computer lab running on one system. I do something simular on my Mac with Parallels and only 2 displays where I have a keyboard and a mouse hooked up via USB and I mount those USB devices into my Virtual System and have it Full Screen on an other system. So it just like having 2 systems side by side.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Here's what I'm pictuing: People spend tons of money to make their computer quiet and well-cooled. But if the thing lived in the cold basement, they could bolt in cheap gigantic fans and disturb noone. But here's the kicker: The basement computer would be a multi-user system, where all the users of the household (including, for example, the living room display) would be using the same system simultaneously. Their rooms would contain displays and input devices only, wired in by fiber. Even if that happens, they're unlikely to get in each others' way, since by then these things will have at least 16 processor cores for them to share. But it means that if a single user needs to do something processor-intensive, she'll have the power of a pretty serious 16-core machine behind her, while the kids browsing myspace from the same computer (but on a different display) won't even notice.
3D GPUs are also about to go seriously multicore, and resource division on those will be easier than it is with CPUs. So if there are two gamers in the house, they could share a powerful multicore card and get acceptable performance. But if only one of them is playing, he can hog the resources of all the cores, and turn everything up to eleven.
This paradigm of the basement computing appliance could revolutionize the way hardware is made and marketed. Multisocket motherboards for the mass market could easily become common, but I'm picturing also a system of arbitrary daughterboards with extra processing units, which will speed up the system without forcing the owner to scrap things. Sure it will become a giant lego-like mess that sounds like a jet, but that's OK. It's in the basement (and will by then hopefully have sane power management which will turn off absolutely every part of every chip which isn't being used).
My point is that normal households with multiple computers today duplicate a lot of resources which go wasted, since single user has the opportunity to use them all simultaneously. The way to fix that is to pool all the household's processing into a single, big, arbitrarily extensible machine which stays out of people's way. And for that, we need a good long-run digital video over fiber standard. And maybe, with all the excess heat these things will put off, they really could double as the hot water heater!
but the PC can be locked away somewhere safe.
You misspelled that last word. It should be q-u-i-e-t.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Instead of forking over 1200 quid for the card, take 300 of those to get a good card and use the other 900 (or less) to make the computer silent.
Been there and done that.
I've replaced the heatsinks and fans on every system I've ever owned. I've built and made use of, with varying degrees of success, soundproof enclosures. I own a number of VIA fanless systems (some with 2.5" drives) and two Soekris boxes -- they all make noise. Betcha ya didn't know that monitors (CRT or LCD) make noise? If I could get back all the money and time (often compromising on performance) I spent pursuing the uphill-both-ways effort of making things less annoying, I could have easily afforded the Matrox box and gone back to rackmounting everything in a sane manner.
I live in an area where the loudest noise is the sound of birds chirping. The office I work is such that with the window closed, the noise output of a single laptop is acceptable, but a distraction. And that's only because I moved (to an enclosed closet) the hissing, buzzing, and whining collection of peripherals (which, by their very nature, typically have no moving parts and are therefore supposed to completely silent), and then moved everything else either to a room on the other side of an adjoining wall or the garage.
Silent, of course, is a relative term. If you work or live in an area where there's a fair amount of ambient noise, then maybe you won't notice, or care. A pebble in a shoe can be overlooked, but enough pebbles over a long enough walk and you will notice. The shitty thing is that for most of us who make a living using computers, it's always a long walk, and one that you'll repeat day-in day-out until you retire. In that light, 1200 quid doesn't seem a bad investment.
Why not put a USB DVD burner on one of the many USB ports?
Ken
Exactly - even though this only displaces a single PC, you can make that PC quite powerful, and even a 1U rackmount server ot blade (with requisite PCIe 1x slot available) could provide a very dense solution. If a blade dies, move the fiber connection to a live blade, and you're back up in minutes.
Ken
It carries audio (in and out), USB, and USB keyboard/mouse - did you even look at the review before deciding what it could and could not do?
This unit is a video display extension unit with high bandwidth (4x 1,920 x 1,200 DVI), keyboard extension with audio and USB. It is all carried over fiber, to a breakout card that install in the PC. This unit IS the video card, and the fiber extends the PCIe 1x motherboard connection out to the remote unit, along with PC connections.
Also, I've only seen two display KVMs, this unit carries FOUR.
KVMs are for multiple systems, displayed one at a time - this unit is for one unit with four displays, simultaneously... Big difference.
Ken
We have a friend who damaged her ear in an accident and simply can't tolerate any level of white noise or background humming. Her and her husband have gone so far as to build onto their house and concentrate all of the noisy appliances into the new section so that the rest of the house can be silent. When they visit our house, we unplug the refrigerator while they're around.
When I tell her husband about this, he will place an order within the hour. They've had a hard time getting a silent PC that's quiet enough (yes, her ear is really that damaged) but still reasonably nice, and I'm certain they'd rather have a high-end, powerful PC that can sit in the "noisy part" of the house and still be absolutely silent at her desk.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I swore off Matrox in 1995 after spending $400 on a card, all to find out there was no way to get X running in more than 16 color mode without spending several hundred more dollars on Accelerated-X licenses at the time.
This sparked my interest for the basic of data centers and keeping Industrial Operator Interfaces safe. You can put the user's keyboard/mouse anywhere you want on the plant floor and only be risking the extension device and a monitor/keyboard and mouse rather then the application and data and more importantly the access to control your plant equipment. If something happens that the floor stuff gets destroyed, just go to the nice big computer room that houses all of the computers, has redundant AC system, thick sound proof and explosion proof walls and operate from there for a time. In many plants I have worked in, individual controls rooms get redunant AC/expensive UPS systems, etc. because they house an operator interface/Data mining server class machine. These machine have to be accessible by the opreator and in the controls world, pulling across a network it not always an option due to distance and network security (Industrial Controls systems are almost always on thier own network connecting Operator Interfaces and controls equipment and get run as small networks in a local areas of the plant with no connection to a network the has internet access). I can see some more nich spots where this woudl be a great thing. I do agree with a number of the comments, I would love to see a consumer version, then I would put my PC in the corner of my basement and only I/O devices on my desk.
99% of the people and organizations that would buy it at a reasonable price are not the target market at this price. That was precisely my point.
Sure they won't sell many - not at that price. That's self-defetaing though: because we don't sell many, we'll have to sell them expensively to recoup initial development. When we sell them expensively we won't sell many. Everyone who currently uses thin clients and have experienced annoyances (=most of them) would consider them at a reasonable price. As you point out, even private individuals would, if the price was dropped by atleast 80%.
for certain enterprise solutions. They also make a switch for their fiber kvm extenders...
http://www.thinklogical.com/products/dcs.php
Again, it would be nice if they made consumer product, but it is a niche.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Exactly my point. You had to pony up some series cash to get into such a system back then.
You can find lots of stuff on multiple screens by just googling.Multiple remote screens with all that functionality?
A dumb terminal replaces the Matrox hardware for much cheaper.Lots of people don't want dumb terminals. They want nice fat systems for whatever reason. This gives them that option.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Well, I hope you're not arguing that the monitor is too loud and that's the argument for the Matrox card. Ponder for a moment and you'll see why it isn't.
Aside of that, I've built crates with a noise output under 20 dB. It is actually possible to get under the hearing threshold (though the cost usually doesn't warrant it).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
All the morons who think this is a good idea should google "KVM extender". They've been around for years.
Nope. This gadget isn't so you can "hide the PC", it's for something else. Public information displays stuff like that...
No sig today...
I support an energy trade floor and got to demo the beta of the Extio over a year ago. We currently have a mixed environment where every trader has a laptop and a blade that resides in our server room. The big plus for us with this device is it turned the laptops into 4 monitor blades because you can connect to it via an expresscard slot. I can say that the blades which push an Nvidia Quadro over cat5 is always washed out whereas the Extio looked very crisp and clear.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
*clap* *clap*
Sir, that was beautiful. True poetic genius.
You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people. - notnAP, #26891325
Homer: Mmmmmm Remote Multi-Display MythTV System...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is ridiculous. It's like you're complaining that the cost of MRI scanners is too high. Sure, it might be nice if there was a consumer version but for what the pros need, the price is the price.
Rich
Does anyone know if I can play EQ2 on one of these bad boys? Anyone know if any games like EQ2/WoW will run on multiple displays? Are there any games out there that can do this? 4x4 Minesweeper FTW! lolz...
-50 DKP for lame post!
...with SGI machines. I have no idea what tech they were using (I worked in the Ince buildings next door, but got to tour the datacenter and production floors once), but each designer had two SGI boxes linked with some Cray-sourced technology. Both machines were rackmounted in a block-long data center. Out on the production floor, all that was on the desks was a keyboard, mouse, screen, and a pod into which you could hook up speakers or headphones. Totally silent production floor, all the noisy fans, heat issues, etc., were in the data center. Fiber optics running along the (exposed) ceiling supplied the I/O. Pretty trick in '01.
geek. lawyer.
Another good use for these -- clean rooms. I work in the pharma industry, and always cringe when I see a PC in a clean room. You've got a fan pushing air through the insides of a dust-collecting box, that you can't spray down with disinfectant to decontaminate.
With one of these, you've still got the keyboard/monitor, but you can get sealed keyboards and LCD monitors fairly easily, while sealed PCs are a lot harder to come by.
He knew what your point was, and made his.
I can imagine 7 foot basketball super stars snapping these things up, and Paris Hilton can afford to buy at least two whole entire units.
I come here for the love
Virtually all "media other than USB" can be connected via USB, so I don't see a big problem.
While external DVD+-R drives are in the $60-70 range right now (compared to $30-40 for internal), there's no reason why they couldn't drop to be just a dollar or two more than an internal drive if demand increased, since there's not a whole lot of extra hardware necessary. Readers for many other types of media (especially flash cards) are only just now being built in to computers, and are more commonly used in readers attached via USB. To put it another way, which would you rather have: A computer with USB as the only means of input/output, or a computer with no USB and only current standard media/connectors (setting aside video, sound, and keyboard/mouse, which the Extio covers)? I think you'd find that after a few years, the USB-only machine would be far better suited to taking advantage of new technologies and present far fewer limitations.
G
I can login to my home machine in California, while I am working in India. The quality of the graphics is limited only by the speed of the network.
What do I win ?
A while back, I had a requirement were having 3 to 5 monitors up showing data, analysis, and results all LIVE would speed up results. Matrox looked like the product that would do the job. I looked at the Matrox solution, and found my bank account wanting. So I looked at what Debian/Knoppix/Ubuntu offered. The result is a multi-monitor graphics machine for the price of a single Matrox card; Good product, I just can not afford it.
If a computer virus can propagate via Bluetooth connections between two vulnerable computers in physical proximity, is it then considered to be an airborne computer virus?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I guess that means optical isnt going the way of the dodo? yay wireless!! what ever happened to the wireless hdmi...
... almost fooled me.
If the answer is war, you are asking the wrong question
KVMs have no place in this discussion, KVM Extenders do...
Mulitple Monitors being extended is the big deal, not switching.
Now that we agree this is not about KVMs (though you want to compare prices and features between this unit and KVMs in each of your posts), what is the big deal here?
Reduced line noise - remoting four high resolution (HD Video quality, 1,920 x 1,200) via fiber generates no noise in the line, to degrade signal or interfere with other wiring.
Reduces cabling - one fiber pair carrying 4x HD video, USB, and Audio over 250 meters is a nice, clean solution - alternatives may not exist using copper cabling.
Reduced noise - by enabling the remoting of the PC without degrading the user experience this hardware can be used to make absolutely quiet workstations/displays.
The closest product to this is a KVM Extender over either Cat5 or IP (which are not the same thing, one is a plain copper pair, the other is IP packets), and those solutions offer lower bandwidth at relatively high prices ($500/port is not unusual). This unit not only extends the video and USB (incl. mouse/keyboard), but it includes the four-head video card, a $750 item from Matrox, reducing the actual cost of a solution.
Ken
Except it is not really possible to make those cheap with todays technology. They require human-sized magnets with very high precision and field-strengths from 0.3 to 4 teslas, give or take. Which gives you the choice between literally dozens of tons of permanent magnets, resistive magnets eating hundred KW or more and at that providing poot precision, or superconducting magnets, such as niobium-titanium at cryogenic temperatures, typically provided by liquid helium. This ain't cheap for fairly fundamental reasons.
Also, even if it *was* cheap, you'd need to be a medical doctor or similarily educated to make any use of it, which ain't the case for graphics-cards.
This card, on the other hand, is essentially a bog-standard pciE graphics-card, except it is cut in two, and there is an interface on each side of the cut that communicates over fibre-optics.
We already *know* the price of a pciE-interface (~$10 or thereabouts) and of a quad-1600x1200 graphics-card without accelerated 3D ($150 or thereabouts)
Linking the two halves with fibre-optic will offcourse cost additional but there's no fundamental reason it needs to cost $2000.
So yeah, it's exactly like that, except for the detail that this has parts-cost of perhaps $150 and an MRI has parts-cost around $1million. Oh yeah, and apart from the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people using graphics-cards and screens every day and a -tiny- group of people competent to use an MRI.
Oh yeah, and an MRI is *extremely* dangerous. (you need insane precautions to avoid getting magnetic metal near it...) This ain't at all.
So, the same, except for some very minor details, yeah.
The Millennium was big for lower-end CAD graphics for awhile because it could do two screens with one card (IIRC). These days Matrox seems to cater to video work and big projects/companies that demand multi-monitor setups.