Wireless link between CPU and graphics adapter?

M

Mikael Hammer

Guest
Dear netlanders,

I have observed two recent chages of PC hardware. One is the gradual
replacement of CRTs with flat screens. The other is the proliferation of
radio transceivers for wireless mice, keyboards and LAN networks.

Now, I ask myself, would it be possible to cut the final cord which
connects the PC to the screen and replace it by another radio device?

I suppose that the transmission of the raw, uncoded signal would call
for a tremendous bandwidth, but what if one puts parts of the graphics
board electronics plus some RAM in the screeen itself and just transmits
high level commands like updates and translations?

I can envisage that the latter approach would make it possible to limit
the necessary bitrate over the radio interface, but I really have no
idea of the order of magnitude of the necessary bitrate.

Is there anyone out there who knows or could make an educated guess what
is the bitrate of the traffic from the CPU to the graphics adapter? Are
there any software tools (like profilers) that could be employed to
collect the necessary data or would hardware maesurement be the only option?

I realize that the necessary bandwidth probably depends on the
application being run on the computer. For some advanced PC games, the
bitrate might be too high to be comfortably accommodated in the
available radio spectrum, but what about more utilitarian applications?

Thanks in advance,
Mikael Hammer
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dept. of Telecommunications
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway
 
There's another way to go: remote terminal. Unix had it for a long time, and
from (around) XP Windows has it too. You can put the client on a
battery-powered hand-held device with a large display and a wireless
ethernet and you have what you just described. Microsoft advertises this as
'smart display' I think. Take a look at ViewSonics' airdisplay at

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/airpanel_airpanel100.htm

Regards,
Andras Tantos

Dear netlanders,

I have observed two recent chages of PC hardware. One is the gradual
replacement of CRTs with flat screens. The other is the proliferation of
radio transceivers for wireless mice, keyboards and LAN networks.

Now, I ask myself, would it be possible to cut the final cord which
connects the PC to the screen and replace it by another radio device?

I suppose that the transmission of the raw, uncoded signal would call
for a tremendous bandwidth, but what if one puts parts of the graphics
board electronics plus some RAM in the screeen itself and just transmits
high level commands like updates and translations?

I can envisage that the latter approach would make it possible to limit
the necessary bitrate over the radio interface, but I really have no
idea of the order of magnitude of the necessary bitrate.

Is there anyone out there who knows or could make an educated guess what
is the bitrate of the traffic from the CPU to the graphics adapter? Are
there any software tools (like profilers) that could be employed to
collect the necessary data or would hardware maesurement be the only
option?

I realize that the necessary bandwidth probably depends on the
application being run on the computer. For some advanced PC games, the
bitrate might be too high to be comfortably accommodated in the
available radio spectrum, but what about more utilitarian applications?

Thanks in advance,
Mikael Hammer
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dept. of Telecommunications
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway
Click to expand...
 
"Mikael Hammer" <Mikael.Hammer@tele.ntnu.no> wrote in message
news:blbbqj$5d6$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no...
Now, I ask myself, would it be possible to cut the final cord which
connects the PC to the screen and replace it by another radio device?

I suppose that the transmission of the raw, uncoded signal would call
for a tremendous bandwidth, but what if one puts parts of the graphics
board electronics plus some RAM in the screeen itself and just transmits
high level commands like updates and translations?
Click to expand...
Assuming you're using an LCD screen, so slow refresh isn't an issue, you're
looking at something like:
24 bits per pixel x 1024 pixels wide x 768 pixels high x 60 Hz
Which is 1132462080 bits per second, or about 20 times faster than 802.11g.

I can envisage that the latter approach would make it possible to limit
the necessary bitrate over the radio interface, but I really have no
idea of the order of magnitude of the necessary bitrate.

Is there anyone out there who knows or could make an educated guess what
is the bitrate of the traffic from the CPU to the graphics adapter? Are
there any software tools (like profilers) that could be employed to
collect the necessary data or would hardware maesurement be the only
option?
Click to expand...

I think it would be pretty difficult to put enough instrumentation into a
device driver to measure that traffic effectively. A PCI bus analyzer could
probably easily measure the traffic level, though.

I realize that the necessary bandwidth probably depends on the
application being run on the computer. For some advanced PC games, the
bitrate might be too high to be comfortably accommodated in the
available radio spectrum, but what about more utilitarian applications?
Click to expand...
Well, you can estimate by looking at what constitutes an "acceptable"
interface for a given task. For general office productivity type stuff, an
X-Windows connection over 10 Mbit Ethernet is more than adequate. So that's
your low-end target. You should be able to get away with even lower than
that if you don't have to support the dancing paperclip :)

On the other end of the spectrum, many 3D games already suffer from a lack
of bandwidth to the display hardware, even with an AGP attachment. So, for a
wireless connection, you'd probably need on the order of 10-20 Gbits/second
for the best performance. I don't know of any commonly-available RF
technology that will provide that kind of bandwidth, but I'm not an EE.

Of course, for the "high-end" number, almost all of that bandwidth usage is
texture and geometry transfers, rather than actual drawing instructions. If
you were to develop a "wireless enhanced display system", you could load the
back end up with a LOT of local memory, which would lessen the number of
transfers. Note that 128MB is considered "adequate" for an AGP-connected
adapter these days.

-Mark
 
I realize that the necessary bandwidth probably depends on the
application being run on the computer. For some advanced PC games, the
bitrate might be too high to be comfortably accommodated in the
available radio spectrum, but what about more utilitarian applications?

Thanks in advance,
Mikael Hammer
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dept. of Telecommunications
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway
Click to expand...
I have a difficult time envisioning this being implemented in RF, and used
in commodity hardware. However if you were to discuss a free-air optical
link, I'd be more optimistic. It would be inconvenient to set up and
maintain beam alignment, but perhaps a single fiber optic cable could be
used in difficult situations.

I honestly do not see the problem with the VGA/DVI cable; you still need at
least one cable to run power to the device, so one more doesn't really hurt.
 
Mikael Hammer wrote:
I have observed two recent chages of PC hardware. One is the gradual
replacement of CRTs with flat screens. The other is the proliferation of
radio transceivers for wireless mice, keyboards and LAN networks.

Now, I ask myself, would it be possible to cut the final cord which
connects the PC to the screen and replace it by another radio device?
Click to expand...
This cord *has* actually been cut for a number of wireless PC projectors
(from Epson, among others) using standard IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN
technology for transmission of display data (though probably not on a
framebuffer basis). While there is no technical reason why this wouldn't
work for ordinary TFTs as well, the primary purpose of such projectors
is the display of presentations where the bandwidth problem usually
isn't much of an issue, unlike with PC games and the like.

Michael
 
On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 09:38:58 +0200, Mikael Hammer
<Mikael.Hammer@tele.ntnu.no> wrote:

Dear netlanders,

I have observed two recent chages of PC hardware. One is the gradual
replacement of CRTs with flat screens. The other is the proliferation of
radio transceivers for wireless mice, keyboards and LAN networks.

Now, I ask myself, would it be possible to cut the final cord which
connects the PC to the screen and replace it by another radio device?

I suppose that the transmission of the raw, uncoded signal would call
for a tremendous bandwidth, but what if one puts parts of the graphics
board electronics plus some RAM in the screeen itself and just transmits
high level commands like updates and translations?

I can envisage that the latter approach would make it possible to limit
the necessary bitrate over the radio interface, but I really have no
idea of the order of magnitude of the necessary bitrate.

Is there anyone out there who knows or could make an educated guess what
is the bitrate of the traffic from the CPU to the graphics adapter? Are
there any software tools (like profilers) that could be employed to
collect the necessary data or would hardware maesurement be the only option?

I realize that the necessary bandwidth probably depends on the
application being run on the computer. For some advanced PC games, the
bitrate might be too high to be comfortably accommodated in the
available radio spectrum, but what about more utilitarian applications?

Thanks in advance,
Mikael Hammer
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dept. of Telecommunications
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway
Click to expand...
HDTV takes less than 20Mhz bandwidth, LCD panel row-column
addressing (non serial raster) and current liquid crystal response
of at best 20msec mean bandwidth is not a real problem nowdays.
Cost and interference no doubt are...
 
In article <blbbqj$5d6$1@tyfon.itea.ntnu.no>,
Mikael.Hammer@tele.ntnu.no mentioned...
Dear netlanders,

I have observed two recent chages of PC hardware. One is the gradual
replacement of CRTs with flat screens. The other is the proliferation of
radio transceivers for wireless mice, keyboards and LAN networks.

Now, I ask myself, would it be possible to cut the final cord which
connects the PC to the screen and replace it by another radio device?
Click to expand...
No. The massively large amount of data would take too much bandwidth.

I suppose that the transmission of the raw, uncoded signal would call
for a tremendous bandwidth, but what if one puts parts of the graphics
board electronics plus some RAM in the screeen itself and just transmits
high level commands like updates and translations?
Click to expand...
No, that would require too much hardware and CPU power, i.e. $$$.

[snip]

I realize that the necessary bandwidth probably depends on the
application being run on the computer. For some advanced PC games, the
bitrate might be too high to be comfortably accommodated in the
available radio spectrum,
Click to expand...
Exactly.

but what about more utilitarian applications?
Click to expand...
What they should do is perfect voice recognition so that the keyboard
usage can be drastically reduced.

One guy at our computer club meetings has been trying to sell his
unopened package of Dragon Naturally Speaking. A few months ago he
had it for sale for $150, and has been marking it down every month,
until at the last meeting I think it was down to $50 and there were
still no takers.

Leads one to believe that VR is still in its infancy.

Thanks in advance,
Mikael Hammer
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dept. of Telecommunications
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Trondheim, Norway
Click to expand...

--
@@F@r@o@m@@O@r@a@n@g@e@@C@o@u@n@t@y@,@@C@a@l@,@@w@h@e@r@e@@
###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/electronics/databank.htm
My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 <at> hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@
 
In article <3f79ef18$1@news.microsoft.com>,
andras_tantos@tantos.yahoo.com mentioned...
There's another way to go: remote terminal. Unix had it for a long time, and
from (around) XP Windows has it too. You can put the client on a
battery-powered hand-held device with a large display and a wireless
ethernet and you have what you just described. Microsoft advertises this as
'smart display' I think. Take a look at ViewSonics' airdisplay at

http://www.viewsonic.com/products/airpanel_airpanel100.htm

Regards,
Andras Tantos
Click to expand...
We had a server for that Citrix thin client stuff, and it got dropped,
I can't remember why. But basically, these systems have disadvantages
that outweigh the advantages. One thing that comes to mind is that
if the processing is forced onto the server, then a multiuser system
requires a huge and expensive server. And people just won't spend
tens of thousands of dollars on a server. (Even tho it may be
cheaper on a per user basis.)

[snip]

--
@@F@r@o@m@@O@r@a@n@g@e@@C@o@u@n@t@y@,@@C@a@l@,@@w@h@e@r@e@@
###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/electronics/databank.htm
My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 <at> hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html
@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@
 
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