UC Irvine's monster HIPerWall monitor
posted Oct 25th 2005 5:05PM
Just when we were feeling superior with our triple monitor setup, the techies at UC Irvine's Calit2 Center of GRAVITY (Graphics, Visualization and Imaging Technology) had to go and show us up with not a four, not a five, but a 50 display Frankenmonitor powered by 25 Power Mac G5s (each loaded with 2GB of RAM) supported by the team's proprietary tiling software. And these aren't any regular old monitors, mind you; they are Apple's top-of-the-line 30-inch Cinema Displays maxed-out at 2560 x 1600 resolution. To save you a trip to the calculator, the HIPerWall (for Highly Interactive Parallelized display) measures 192-inches diagonally and sports a maximum resolution of 25,600 x 8000-so although this enormous setup was designed with medical, meteorological, and military uses in mind, all we can think about is the number of Dashboard widgets we could cram in.
[Via TUAW]
Or RAM? do you mean of RAM?
just checking
The Sam
Wouldn't it have been cheaper, and even better looking, to use a few large plasmas?
I wonder how many plasmas it takes to get 25,600 x 8000 resolution tho...
It's not (only) size they are after... (if it was, they would have used a projector). These guys want very very high resolution. For that purpose, the Apple Cinema Displays was their best bet.
Not necessarily. Plasma's are incredibly heavy. Also, depending on the manufacturer (and size) - the image quality can be sub-par compared to LCD or other technologies.
Plus, they are using mac G5's, so I'm guessing they took the easy route and used apple displays to guarantee comptability.
In the end it all rests upon user preference.
$393,533 grant from the National Science Foundation made this possible.
It is kind of ironic that we are going to lose PBS, because at the price of that display(s) they can't afford cable TV now.
i wish that was a picture of my living room
you guys are all missing the main point. just how many "number of Dashboard widgets we could cram in." :-D
YAY! GO UCI! i go there....n im a freshman 2 haha
this is tight azz
psst...GO UCI ANT EATERS!
I'm a 3rd year undergrad at UCI, and I'm working on the HiPerWall project. My research involves increasing data throughput to the G5 nodes used to power the diplays. We have 2 displays on each G5, so that means we have a total a 25 G5s. Why not plasmas? Because they support the high res of our 30in ACDs. The nice thing about the wall is that you can walk up to the display in order to "zoom in." You can't do that on a plasma.
Would somebody *please* make Gary shut up?
Seriously.
This seems like a pretty grievous waste of resources to me. 25 boxes to power 50 monitors? Just plain silly.
do you think they would notice if i erm took one.id take it from the edge.wouldnt hardly be noticeable...
That's gratuitous.
All they need to do now is remove the bezels so it's more of a seamless wall. ;)
Wow. I can't believe my former school went and did this... that and the fact they're building something new every single freakin year... Other than knowing them as a place of getting great gadgets and gizmos, its known for Under Construction Indefinately!
thats weird.. i go to UCI and i didnt even know about this..
Cool!
Super hi-def porn! :D
Go Eaters!
i like that the insane resolution is completely overshadowed by the fact that the face of it is crisscrossed by the edges of the monitors.
4th ICS Major, go Eaters! This rocks...
What a wasteful academic exercise. I've seen academic UI groups around the world do things like this.
Practically you'd use, say, projectors. But in academia where there is a ton of money to burn on buzzword adventures, hey lets use 50 LCDs!
Wrong. UCI is known as the Univeristy for Chinese Immigrants. My idiot brother goes there. I go to MIT, and MIT wouldn't waste $400,000 on a project as stupid as this.
In order to zoom, I need to walk up to the screen? Give me a break and and get a real mascot.
Dang, whatever anyone does, remember: everything you do and think of is far surperior! So don't say anything except, "oh that sucks", "i go to MIT and have never seen a boob (porn doesn't count)". it seems that the only way to fill the void in your empty soul is to ridicule everything, that's ok though, you aren't special in any way and will never do anything productive. can't wait till next time to read your facetiously smart comments about how everything is lame.
My razr and ipod suck! oh no, i've become one of them....
I do agree that no one would dare venture to do something like this unless, as in the case of most of academia, given copious grants and other funding, but I still think it's neat and innovative. HiPerWall's on to something big, and I'm sure that lots 'n' lots more free money won't stop these researchers from perfecting something that's still in its very early stages. I don't doubt that this monstrosity could very well save lives through refined medical imaging techniques. And junk.
And #19. Oh, stop being a bully, you dickweed.
Hey, #19...who cares if you go to MIT! What have you done there other then take classes? Doing any research? Attended any conferences? Given any presentations? Do you know anything about visualization? Walking up to the display to "zoom in" would save you from losing other sets of data or portions of an image! When you zoom in on an image, you lose a ton of the image because your display does not have the a resolution that exceeds that of your image. THINK ABOUT IT before you say anything.
To #10 As for 2 displays per mac, well you do NEED a high end graphics card to power the 30in displays, and I don't think anyone would try to put more than two cards into a box! Plain silly? I think you just don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Projectors? Those are very low resolution! Highest is usually 1024 x 768 (laptops have higher resolutions than that)....GOSH! haha
zot zot... ;P
Hey #9 (wtfunkymonkey) wahts ur prob man, im jus givin my school props...
bOO! #9
This isn't a large monitor array. It's an electronic window.
Just so people don't get fooled by the picture...
The tall professor in the center is like a 7-footer. How do I know, I graduated from UCI and I took his class.
...just makes the screen that much bigger.
2nd year at UCI.. first off gary shutup. your too excited to be going to UCI, we are proud quiet people, or annoyed ashamed quiet people. point being, we are quietm, learn it your first year.
now onto the project, orginally i was annoyed that my money was wasted on such a look what i can do with a lot of money situation. however learning from comments that it was a $393,533 grant from the National Science Foundation. i can now care less and think its pretty cool.
however it would have been nicer if UCI had built a UCI super computer instead of just Celling a bunch of consumer Apples. hell we made the fastest and smallest conductive material known to man, we cant build our own super computer(s)?
Hehe, rip 'em 'Eaters. :) *throws up the anteater*
Now my brother is pestering me to go check that thing out. Any of my fellow Anteaters know if they let the public view that thing? I'm Information and Computer Science, so I'd be especially interested. :)
Note to number 19... Newsflash for ya, UCI was once considered University of Chinese Immigrants, but with Koreans being the majority of the Asian population (2nd being Vietnamese, 3rd being the Chinese), I now have to say that UCI has to considered Under Construction Indefinately. My years of college over there just proved that the school was always under construction, one way or another.
But yeah, Go UCI for doing something bold!
What a waste of money...
25,600 x 8000 resolution per monitor or spread out over 50 monitors? The latter is not that impressive, and I find it impractical. I doubt the human eye can process so much information (massive amounts of detail spread over an expansive plane) anyways.
Cart Subtotal: $201,150.00
#27: I just read through the article from UCI and you guys already have a supercomputer. It's UCI's Earth System Modeling Facility. The HIPerWall monitor will be used to stream "multi-gigabyte datasets" from it as one function. Looks like each pair of monitors will be powered by a dual-processor 2.7ghz G-5 and a 6800 Ultra, and supposedly to have access to 10 terabytes of storage. I wonder when did they buy the 6800 Ultras because the 7800s has been out for some time now.
And this is when the largest Porno live archive begins. 50 different porno's playing at the same time, and who says you can't have some hentai with that either.
*get smacked across head*
Arrr... Me invisible wife can be a harsh mystress.
Let's see.... huge monitor wall, or full scholarship to 5 (10? No idea how much UCI tuition is) needy students... bah, screw the students! They can take out loans!
They've had the powermacs for quite a while now. It was well before summer. Everything was ready before CalIT even opened. As for the ICS major, you can't just walk in. You need a key card or must be working on the project in some way or another. But if you're really dying to see the display, contact prof. Jenks or Kuester.
Check out this picture:
http://spds.ece.uci.edu/~sjenks/Pages/HIPerWall-Pages/Image8.html
The tallest guy is Professor Jenks and he's over 7 feet tall!
Check out this picture:
http://spds.ece.uci.edu/~sjenks/Pages/HIPerWall-Pages/Image8.html
The tallest guy is Professor Jenks and he's over 7 feet tall!
Hey #21, UCI may be the Ant Eaters, but MIT is the beavers. Seriously.... the beavers.
Working at 3840x2400 22" monitors would be much more difficult than 30" 2560x1600 monitors. However, these 22" monitors are difficult to find now that IBM recently discontinued the lineup a couple of months ago. http://www.9xmedia.com/
http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/sage/gallery.php
As far as that post speaking of projectors, this is what he is talking about. There are pros and cons to this as with everything.
http://www.inition.co.uk/inition/product_largescreenvis_visbox_viswall.php?SubCatID_=40
As far as the plasma comment. There are "lcd" technologies that provide huge resolutions. I can't find the link to the most recent huge resolution "tv" but it is impressive but out of reach financially for a project like this and probably could not get it to work the way they are looking for it to work.
Here's one from a while back.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20050927A6028.html
Oh, here it is
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=173402762
Here is a system with Mac Mini computers...crazy stuff which has 28xxx x 768 resolution with 22 mac minis and 22 40" monitors.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2005/9/19/1287
This is more eye candy than product. http://www.go-l.com/
There are tons of websites that either offer systems like what is in this article. There's a yahoo groups forum if you are interested in high resolution systems. It's called IBM_T2X_LCD. Come join!
That is sooo cool!
If only they could remove the borders on the screens, then we could use it for games and movies!!
I've been thinking about a big screen set-up, but this is even bigger. Anyone have a projector?
I've been reading about how to do it here...
http://www.thenextcooltoy.com/Reviews/HomeTheaterH78DC3Salara.aspx
That is sooo cool!
If only they could remove the borders on the screens, then we could use it for games and movies!!
I've been thinking about a big screen set-up, but this is even bigger. Anyone have a projector?
I've been reading about how to do it here...
http://www.thenextcooltoy.com/Reviews/HomeTheaterH78DC3Salara.aspx