Graphics Options Have Value
Electric Energy T&D - December 2007
The broad selection of IT components available to consumers has continued to grow by leaps and bounds in recent years. With respect to graphics processing hardware and software, this is no less true. Competition had always been fierce in this domain. But when Intel® introduced its own graphics program in the late 1990's and took almost the entire low end of the graphics hardware market in the years that followed, it sharpened competition in that space even further. In fact, the competitive landscape in the graphics market promoted innovation. Some companies focused on a graphics program aimed at delivering 3D performance to differentiate themselves against standard on-board graphics. Other companies developed a graphics program aimed at delivering products that were optimized for more specific usage scenarios. Today, it is possible to find graphics hardware products that provide specialized capabilities for specific industries ranging from medical imaging, to air traffic control, and to areas where collaborative display walls are deployed. Almost all domains that benefit from advanced graphics capabilities have a corresponding product that best meets their requirements. Additionally, the range of graphics card options for workstations has grown considerably. This affords IT managers a selection of products that can be chosen based on the required feature sets for a given project. Such feature sets include 3D performance, image quality, long product life cycles, low power consumption, form-factor, and so forth.
When considered along with the even more ferocious competition that has taken place in the computer monitor space, driving the prices of monitors down considerably, the increased number of graphics options for control rooms have brought many new possibilities to IT managers. It's therefore no surprise that the trend in high-reliability environments, where monitoring of real-time information is conducted, has been to deploy graphics hardware that supports the use of multiple displays. In environments where two monitors were once used, many operator stations have grown to now employ the use of three or four. Where four monitors were used before, some operator consoles have grown to make use of eight or even more displays per operator. Lower costs coupled with substantially better tools and greater software compatibility has made the use of multi-monitor workstations practically ubiquitous in energy control rooms.
