news archive
SGI Helps
Nanyang Students Think in 3D
Mountain
View, California, August 13 - SGI and Nanyang Technological
University (NTU) in Singapore today announced the opening of
the NTU Reality Theater, Southeast Asia's first virtual
reality center for institutions of higher learning. A joint
project between NTU and SGI, the facility is intended to
enhance collaborative research in biological and medical
science, scientific visualization, virtual engineering,
civil contingency planning, education, and digital media.
"Several
NTU research centers are conducting leading-edge work in
computer graphics, scientific visualization, simulation, and
animation," explained Associate Professor Tony Chan,
director of the Center for Advanced Media Technology (CAMTech).
"The Reality Theater will enhance their capability and
the quality of their work. "
The Reality
Theater will be made available to all NTU faculties for
teaching and research and will also be available to external
enterprises and government agencies for relevant
applications and projects. CAMTech, a joint research and
development center between the Fraunhofer Institute for
Computer Graphics of Darmstadt, Germany and NTU, will manage
the theater.
"It is
an honor to play a role in helping NTU reinforce its
position as an innovator among Southeast Asian
universities," said John Kan, Ph.D., managing director,
SGI. "If a single picture can speak a thousand words,
imagine the educational benefits students can reap from a 3D
environment. "
The Reality
Theater provides seating for up to 91 participants. Powered
by a 16-processor SGI visualization system, it provides a
powerful collaborative computing environment within which
users can engage in such activities as interactive,
real-time engineering and design review, data analysis,
critical training, and command-and-control operations.
SGI is
working with NTU to implement a Visual Area Network, SGI's
anytime, anywhere, any-device visualization solution
enabling interactive, collaborative analysis of enormous
amounts of information. Through Visual Area Networking,
researchers can now share large visual data sets with peers
on other continents in real time, bringing the global
research community together in exciting new ways.
The Reality
Theater joins the ranks of other institutes using virtual
reality centers for research and development functions. SGI
has helped to develop more than 600 virtual reality centers
around the world, including the Creative Application
Development Center in Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor,
the U.K. Cosmology Grid, Kyoto University's Institute for
Chemical Research, and the UCLA Visualization Portal.
Information: www.sgi.com/realitycenter.
Court
Grants Silicon Image Monetary Settlement and Running
Royalties from Genesis; Genesis and Pixelworks Cancel
Proposed Merger
Sunnyvale,
California, August 6 (PRNewswire-FirstCall) - Silicon Image
announced today that the federal court has issued its Final
Judgment Order on the patent infringement suit against
Genesis Microchip, Inc. and Genesis Microchip Corp.
(collectively, "Genesis").
In its Final
Judgment Order issued today, the Federal District Court in
Richmond, Virginia, reaffirmed its July 15, 2003 Opinion
that the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two
parties constitutes a binding contractual agreement to
settle the action and shall be in full force and effect as
of December 18, 2002. Under the Final Judgment Order,
Genesis is ordered to make a cash payment as well as to pay
all overdue quarterly royalty payments in exchange for
licenses. None of the payments will be reflected in Silicon
Image's financial reports if the judgment is appealed. The
Court further ordered that the specific terms of the MOU
remain confidential and that the agreement is
non-assignable.
Silicon Image
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David Lee stated,
"We are pleased that this long and arduous process for
our management team, shareholders, and customers has been
concluded so successfully. The Final Judgment Order
reaffirms the significance of our intellectual property and
our resolve to protect our patents. I am delighted that
justice has prevailed and that we can now focus all of our
efforts on the exciting market opportunities associated with
delivering digital media solutions."
On July 20,
following the issuing of the Court's original Opinion, the
Genesis board of directors announced that James E. Donegan
had resigned as the company's Chairman of the Board and CEO,
effective immediately. Donegan said, "The decision to
resign was very difficult, as I feel I have made significant
contributions to the company. …I strongly disagree with
the memorandum opinion recently issued in the litigation
between the company and Silicon Image pending in the United
States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
However, in the best interest of the company and its
stockholders, I have resigned effective immediately."
On August 5,
Genesis and Pixelworks, Inc. jointly announced an agreement
to terminate their proposed - and widely discussed - merger.
Under terms of the agreement, each of the parties agreed to
a mutual release of claims, and Pixelworks agreed to
immediately pay Genesis $5.5 million as a reimbursement for
its expenses.
Information: www.siliconimage.com,
www.genesis-microchip.com.
DTI Funds
Development of ITrans™ Pilot Line
Cambridge,
UK, August 7 - Screen Technology Limited, the
Cambridge-based developer of large-screen display
technology, has won a Smart exceptional development project
award from the UK Department of Trade and Industry's Small
Business Service to develop a pilot manufacturing line for
its novel ITransTM technology. The total value of the
project is £756,000. Smart Exceptional Development awards
are given to projects recognized as being of 'strategic'
importance for a technology or industrial sector.
ITrans allows
displays of essentially unlimited size to be built from
modules based around commodity LCDs, using an innovative
approach that leaves no detectable joins. The company has
already built a 52-inch technology demonstrator. The Smart
award will enable the company to develop the pilot
manufacturing process required to prove the viability of
ITrans display manufacture. A product-quality prototype will
be built during the project.
The first
ITrans products will be targeted at 70- to 200-inch-diagonal
video displays of at least SVGA resolution for the
information and advertising sectors. The technology offers
the high brightness required for use in high ambient light
environments such as shopping malls, transport terminals and
corporate and hotel atriums together, and does so at an
affordable price, a company representative said.
A number of
additional 68-inch production prototype displays will be
built to prove the stability of the process. Some of these
units will be offered to selected customers to enable them
to fully evaluate ITrans technology.
Information: www.screentechnology.com,
www.businesslink.org.
