IBM to spring Roentgen hi-res LCD monitor

IBM to spring Roentgen hi-res LCD monitor
AUSTIN, Texas — IBM Corp. is poised to throw its first high-resolution LCD into the general-purpose monitor arena. The move comes as experts continue to debate the promises and pitfalls of high-res displays.

IBM next month will release a 20.8-inch, 123-pixel/inch device based on Roentgen LCD technology, which the company first discussed roughly two years ago. Packing a 2,048 x 1,536-pixel quad-XGA (QXGA) format into a 20.8-inch diagonal screen, the monitor will be available in May at a price point of around $6,000.

The high cost of high resolution was an issue at the recent DisplaySearch FPD Conference & High Resolution Symposium here. While academicians and human-factor researchers working in industry testified to the increased productivity that high-resolution displays can bring, executives questioned whether the displays' higher costs would have perceived value in mainstream markets.

Most of the participants at the Austin conference agreed that the lack of a supporting high-resolution infrastructure has stranded early displays.

One challenge is that operating systems are by and large pixel-oriented and most applications are written for XGA formats, assuming a screen with about a 96-pixel/inch resolution. In this environment, hi-res screens suffer from the "shrinking icon" problem: Icons simply lose legibility when displayed on the smaller, more tightly packed pixels of a hi-res screen.

Presenters at the conference also decried the "confused mouse" cursor-navigation problems that operating systems confront on systems that use hi-res screens; screen clipping and overwrites; and the waste of pixels that results when a conventional Web page is unable to scale to fully utilize a hi-res screen.

"Scaling issues are a barrier to success" for hi-res displays, said Tim Gee, displays and graphics technologist for Inspiron product marketing at Dell Computer Corp. "Limited software scaling solutions are available today. Scaling is not supported by most applications, and Windows XP will only serve as a Band-Aid to the desktop interface," he said. "Applications need to be fixed in conjunction with the OS."

According to Steve Vrablick, business development director for LCDs at the Display Device and Components Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (Deerfield, Ill.), the solution to today's problems with hi-res displays will require industry collaboration. Operating system providers should generate "user-friendly, resolution-independent font and icon sizes" and "improved cursor navigation and seamless applications across multiple platforms," while application providers address "font sizes, icon sizes and the use of high-resulution benefits," Vrablick said. Hardware support from graphcis controller manufacturers and graphics interface developers is also required, he said.

Dell's Gee called for the "codevelopment of offerings with software partners to optimize applications for high-density panels." He expects to see "scalable OS solutions with the next Windows XP revision in 2002" and said he believes that "a density of around 200 pixels/inch is optimal. It looks like paper."

Gary Starkweather of Micrososft Research spoke of the need for display output to catch up with the quality of printer output. "The OS will need to have a resolution-independent capability. The display needs to provide a set of parameters to which the OS can adapt, and the functional machinery for resolution independence should be invisible to the user.

"The technology for high-resolution displays is pretty much here," he said, "but the tools to optimize it are nowhere near close enough."

With its higher data rates and more complicated EMI management requirements, hi res can also be a strain on the interface.

"The next issue for the industry to address is data rates," said James Larimer of the Flight Control and Cockpit Integration Branch of the Army-NASA Rotorcraft Divison of NASA's Ames Research Center (Moffet Field, Calif.). "The bandwidth requirements, which are driven by display resolution, are already excessive."

A full-color (24-bit) display requires a 1/2-Gbit/second data rate for a 24-Hz refresh rate, Larimer said. That jumps to 22 Gbits/s for a 3,840 x 2,400-pixel display such as IBM's next-generation, 204-pixel/inch Bertha, first discussed by the company late last year.

Larimer suggested, however, that such resolution levels may be excessive. "From a viewing distance of 19 to 24 inches, 130 dots/inch is not perceived as different from more dpi," he said.

Spring debut set

The various hindrances notwithstanding, IBM will venture into the tricky realm of hi-res monitors in the spring, targeting the traditional markets for premium monitors, many of them in the financial industry. In addition to being sold as a standalone peripheral, the 20.8-inch monitor will be bundled with the IBM IntelliStation Pro remote workstation, a 1U rack-mount system announced in February and specifically targeted at financial trading floors.

DisplaySearch, for one, is bullish on hi-res LCDs. The average pixel count in notebook displays today is at the 1,024 x 768-pixel, XGA level, according to DisplaySearch vice president Mark Fihn. But that will rise to a 1,400 x 1,050-pixel SXGA+ level by the end of 2003, thenceforth heading toward 1,600 x 1,200-pixel UXGA. The company is likewise bullish on the gradual intrusion of hi-res SXGA and UXGA screens in monitor applications.

An IBM source said IBM has shipped a few early monitors to select customers who "have high technical capabilities." He cited some "niche areas" that he believes will find hi res most appealing: "The financial trading areas, people in CAD/CAM or in newspaper/magazine publishing are going to love the dots per inch. And we have an oil exploration customer who wants to buy our first six months' worth of supply. He has 40 trailers with about 20 displays in each one."

The company has also shipped a few of the monitors to customers in medical equipment markets where, stripped of its RGB filters, the monitor reaches a 375-pixel/inch monochrome capability. "How to drive it, though, adds another complexity," he noted.

IBM has also shipped a few next-generation Bertha monitors to Lawrence Livermore Labs "at $35,000 a throw," the source said. The QUXGA (3,200 x 2,400-pixel) monitor will likely have a $20,000 price tag when it becomes more widely available.

The source expects IBM to ship "maybe a few hundred" of the Bertha monitors. "It's not destined for real production. But Roentgen is."