LionEyes Display Wall
High Resolution Tiled Display Wall & Linux Cluster
About
The LionEyes Display Wall is a rear-projected high-resolution display
powerwall and graphics cluster with a configuration of 4x3 tiles of 1024x768
resolution projectors, for a total of almost ten million pixels. Each
tile is driven by a dual-processor render node. Twelve render nodes
are controlled by two application nodes for a total of 28 processors.
The high-resolution and large display size allow for the researcher to
see the entire scope and context of a problem but still see minute
detail. Scaling is key to recognition of patterns within data.
Instead of looking through a pin-hole on a desktop computer, the
display wall offers a complete mural of information. Another mode
that is useful is viewing many time-steps or slices side-by-side.
Large spread-sheets, matrices and simple text such as genome code can
also be analyzed with increased clarity and insight.
Systems Specifications
Screen
- Stewart Filmscreen Custom P2000 Series ScreenWall
- image size: 76.5" x 136" (156" diagonal)
- aspect ratio: 1.78:1
- screen material: Filmscreen 150
- frame w/ aperture mounting: 80.5" x 140"
- homemade lumber frame stand
- shadow/bloom masking to smooth edge transaitions and light spill
Projectors
- Infocus Proxima Ultralight x350
- 1200 lumen
- DLP technology
- Native Resolution XGA (1024x768)
- Power Consumption less than 170 Watts, operating; less than 5 Watts, stand by
- 4x3@1024x768 = 4096x2304 = 9,437,184 pixels
- Contrast Ratio 500:1
- Lamp 120 Watt 2,000 hours
- Distance 40.5"-307"/101.6cm-779.8cm
- Image Size (Diagonal) 22.8"-172.8"/57.9cm-438.9cm
Projector Mounts
- 80/20 industrial aluminum "erector set" racking
- Ray Masters' custom six degree-of-freedom projector mounts
Video Cabling
- Black Box video cables
- custom 15x2 video switch from Rossman Audio
- cable length and connection points are minimal to prevent video noise
Cluster Nodes
- 12x Dell Precision 530 Workstations for render nodes
- PNY NVIDIA Quadro 900 XGL
- dual Intel Xeon 2 GHz
- 2 GB RAM
- 2x Dell Precision 650 Workstations for application nodes
- PNY NVIDIA Quadro 900 XGL
- Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz
- 2 GB RAM
Interconnect
- Intel E1000 Gigabit Ethernet NICs w/ Dell PowerConnect 5224 switch
- Dolphin D236 WulfKit3, 3D torus, scalable coherent interface (SCI)
- an internal only firewalled network: HOST.viz.its.psu.edu
- head/application node routes by nating/masquerading with iptables
Operating System
Operation
User accounts on the LionEyes Display Wall may be obtained by
contacting the Visualization Group at vizgroup@psu.edu.
To operate the display wall, you must log into the application/head
node, which is located to the right side of the mural display.
- select buttons one and four on the keyboard/video/mouse switch
- enter your account username and password from the wireless keyboard
- type dmx.sh at a terminal prompt
- you may now control the mural with the large cross-hatched window
- middle-click on the unified mural desktop for a menu
- select the menu programs --> displaywall for applications and demos
- example scripts can be found in the directory /home/chromium/bin
Home directories in /home and global directories in /usr/global are
mounted via NFS across the entire cluster. Other applications can be
found in /usr/local on the application node.
Related Projects
Credits
George Otto, Jack Gundrum, Gavin Burris, Ray Masters, Elena Slobounov,
Matt Stone and Vijay Agarwala
Contact Information & Help
The LionEyes Display Wall is located in Room 139 Computer Building.
Please send any and all comments and questions to
.
Screen
Projector Mounts