This research explores new technologies and system architectures for supporting high-resolution distributed computer displays. This problem is fundamental to the future growth and development of the computer industry and the fields of computer science and engineering. Our approach is to raise the semantic level of computer-display communication in an effort to increase the intelligence of computer displays. This innovation will reduce system bandwidth and, thus, provide greater scalability. By providing local intelligence in displays it will be possible to decouple the notion of a data display from the specific computer to which it is attached. This decoupling of displayed information from computing resources has broad implications that span all the way from personal hand-held devices to public large-format displays.
The investigators approach provides seamless access to any display from any device. It also supports multiple simultaneous connections to a single display. This is achieved via the efficient transport of display primitives, and by using effective higher-level protocols. Developing higher-level semantics for display interfaces improves bandwidth utilization and, therefore, supports larger higher-resolution displays. The combination of higher-level interfaces and local intelligence improves interaction with the ability to adapt the presentation of a content stream to the specific display platform. Intelligent displays will tailor their presentations to low-resolution mobile devices as well as wall-sized boardroom displays. The research includes three initiatives: 1) To investigate and develop new intelligent display architectures capable of overcoming the limitations of traditional frame-buffer architectures. 2) To develop higher-level and more bandwidth-efficient protocols for communicating data to and from visual displays. 3) To develop new synchronization and context-switching capabilities necessary to virtualize displays so that they might be used as distributed resources.
