Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 08:58:01 -0700 From: Jim Barker <jbarker@BBN.COM> To: "'freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG.'" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: New monitor Message-ID: <01BDE086.F1C8A560.jbarker@bbn.com>
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I read the below story on CNET and think this would be a wonderful addition
to the driver's available in the future. The monitor is not yet produced
in mass, but once it is I know I will be purchasing it. I'm not quite sure
if there is even any additional programming needed, if I'm lucky there
won't be and I can just adjust my X11R6 setting's to accomodate. Thanks.
Screen matches printed
page
By Reuters
Special to CNET News.com
September 13, 1998, 9:25 a.m. PT
NEW YORK--Computer users, rest your weary
eyes on this.
Scientists at IBM Research said they have
developed a new flat-panel computer display that
allows users to see text and images with
200-pixel-per-inch clarity that is virtually
indistinguishable from the printed page.
The prototype display, code-named Roentgen after
the inventor of the X-ray machine, has four times
the pixels, or picture elements, in the same space as
common cathode-ray tube desktop monitors,
which display 80 and 100 pixels per inch.
Roentgen displays rely on new active-matrix liquid
crystal technology to produce razor-sharp color
images that, from a normal viewing distance of 16
inches or more, eliminate for the human eye the
fuzziness associated with electronic displays.
"We are right at the point at which human vision
ceases to notice any distortion," Robert Wisnieff,
leader of the research team, said of the
200-pixel-per-inch displays. Office equipment
using such displays will significantly reduce, if not
eliminate, eyestrain, he said.
"There's a good experimental correlation between
[computer screen] legibility and lower eyestrain,"
Wisnieff, manager of the advanced display
technology laboratory at IBM Research in
Yorktown Heights, New York, said in an
interview.
Experts believe that computer eye strain is linked to
the effort the human eye must make to fill in gaps
that exist between the small light elements of
computerized displays, which represent only a
fraction of the elements of a real image.
The displays initially are aimed at high-end niche
uses like aircraft design, medical imaging, legal
record scanning, and digital art libraries but
eventually should find their way into IBM desktop
and notebook computers, Wisnieff said.
Early Roentgen displays will cost more than
$5,000, or several times the $1,500 to $2,000
price of IBM's most expensive cathode-ray
monitors, but prices will fall as demand picks up
and mass manufacturing economics take hold, he
said.
"Ultra-high resolution displays have the potential to
greatly increase the usability...of digital images,
including...architectural and electronic blueprints,
historical archives, and scanned records such as
those stored by hospitals or insurance companies,
Wisnieff said.
"We also expect the degree of clarity and crispness
offered by the Roentgen prototype to be in high
demand for graphic design and electronic publishing
applications," he added.
The first Roentgen products should be in customer
hands later this year, starting with medical imaging
systems, he said.
Besides offering 200 pixels per inch, the new
displays have full color depth and gray-scale
shading on a 16.3-inch diagonal viewing area of
2,560 by 2,048 pixels, or 5.2 million full-color
pixels in all. Each screen uses 15.7 million
transistors and 1.64 miles of thin film aluminum
alloy wiring.
Fellow IBM researcher Kevin Warren said his
group has devised a graphics adapter system, using
standard, off-the-shelf components, capable of
processing the more than 1 billion bits of graphics
data per second that such screens demand. This
allows the displays to be connected to widely
available high-performance personal computers
running Windows operating system, he said.
Work on the Roentgen displays, which began 18
months ago, is the latest outgrowth of research
begun in the mid-1980s by IBM on active matrix
displays. It builds on a 150-pixel-per-inch monitor
under development since 1995 known as "Monet,"
so named because of its capacity to depict the fine
brush strokes of a painting.
Monet technology is now used in IBM's
state-of-the-art ThinkPad 770 notebook model.
The latest development represents more a triumph
of manufacturing improvements than design
breakthrough, researchers said, and is the product
of close work with IBM's ThinkPad display factory
in Japan.
"We had to think in advance how far we could
stretch the design by working with our factory
counterparts in Japan," which allowed IBM to build
scores of prototypes on a standard manufacturing
line instead of one-of-a-kind models in a lab,
Wisnieff said.
The researchers contrasted the work, which uses
existing materials and display manufacturing
equipment, with efforts by competitors to develop
new imaging materials known as polymorphous
silicon. Such technology is unproven and more
costly, as it will require these companies to switch
over their plants to new equipment.
Story Copyright ? 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights
reserved.
Jim Barker
UNIX/NT Administrator
GTE Internetworking
1300 N. 17th Street
Suite 1200
Arlington, VA 22209
(703) 284-4798
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