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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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