Matrox Announces World’s First Single-Slot PCIe x16 Octal Graphics Card for Mission-Critical Environments

Matrox M9188 supports up to eight DisplayPort or DVI Single-Link outputs and can be combined with a second M9188 to drive up to 16 displays, all from a single workstation

Montreal, Canada, November 10, 2009 - Matrox Graphics, the leading manufacturer of specialized graphics solutions, today announced the launch of the Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 Octal graphics card, capable of supporting eight DisplayPort or DVI Single-Link outputs from a single workstation. The Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 offers 2GB of memory, resolutions up to 2560x1600 per output, and advanced desktop management features—such as independent or stretched desktop modes—to drive energy, transportation, process control, financial trading, and other mission-critical environments with exceptional performance.

“The M9188 is designed specifically for professional monitoring environments that require visualization of large amounts of data at once to enhance mission-critical decision making," says Ron Berty, Business Development Manager, Matrox Graphics. "The expansive multi-monitor configuration allows system operators to accurately manage energy grids or train dispatch applications, while ensuring maximum performance across all displays.”

The Matrox M9188 offers robust support for Microsoft Windows XP

, as well as for Linux, which is critical for energy and transportation applications that commonly use display configurations of more than eight monitors.

Matrox also announced a second addition to the M-Series product line with the Matrox M9128 LP PCIe x16, DualHead DisplayPort graphics card. This dual-monitor add-in board is the economical choice to drive business, industrial, and government applications across two displays at resolutions up to 2560x1600.

Matrox M9128 and M9188 Key Features

• Native PCIe x16 performance
• Single-slot graphics cards
• 1 GB (M9128) and 2 GB (M9188) of memory
• Drive two (M9128) or eight (M9188) DisplayPort monitors at 2560x1600 per display or DVI Single-Link monitors at 1920x1200 per display
• Can be combined with other M-Series products (multi-card support)
• Support for stretched or independent desktop modes across all monitors
• Easy deployment and wide enterprise flexibility with unified driver package
• Support for Microsoft Windows

  7 (32/64bit), Windows Vista (32/64bit), Windows XP (32/64bit), Windows Server 2003/2008 (32/64 bit) and Linux

Matrox M9128 and M9188 Availability and Pricing
The Matrox M9128 and M9188 graphics cards will be available in Q4/2009.

• Matrox M9128 LP PCIe x16
  Part number: M9128-E1024LAF
  $259.00 USD
   
• Matrox M9188 PCIe x16  
  Part number: M9188-E2048F
  $1995.00 USD

 
Geek Nirvana exists...

How to draw recolorable icons

Author: Denis Kortunov
18 June 2009

What is a recolorable icon? It is a picture which is capable of changing its color, hence is the world recolorable. There are several ways of getting there. I will tell you about a simple technique that we used while developing Iconza. In essence it’s a web application that provides for changing colors of icons followed by generating the required files.

For example, we want to draw a recolorable folder. We take our favorite vector graphics editor and draw a folder.

How do we go about making this picture recolorable? The secret is that the picture contains two bitmap files: semitransparent flashes/shadows and a color backing at the bottom. So we have the color backing shine through the semitransparent mask. The mask should look like this:

How do we draw such mask? It is quite easy. You take the colored backing and put flashes and shadows on top.

Shining mask (shown against black background for the purposes of demonstration), shading mask, and color backing

The shining mask uses only the white color with various transparencies and the shading mask — only black. The color of backing is not important — pick any color you like, it will change anyway. If you draw several icons, pick a single test color.

Why do we need shining and shading layers at the same time? We do not know what color will be selected by the user and the icon should always look good. Here, for instance, we drew just the shining layer and the user picked the white color for backing. Catastrophe! We got a flat absolutely white icon. The same story only reversed will repeat with the black color. And with shining and shading colors the result will be rather good:

Icons with absolutely white and black backings

It is better, of course, to select almost white (light gray) and almost black (dark dray) — the icons then will gain more volume and appear neat. But even with the extreme values we get good results.

As the shading and shining layers are located in the same file, there is a risk that your icon will appear smudgy — white overlays black giving gray, which blocks the color of backing. You have to take this into consideration while drawing to avoid the multiple layer overlays. Here is the sequence of layers of an Iconza’s icon:

1. Shadow from the folder’s half. The shining layers have a hole shaped as this shadow. (Color: black, 10% opacity)
2. The lower shading volume layer. It should be higher than the backing and overlapping it. This way the outline becomes darker at the bottom. (Black, 40%)
3. Flash on the half of the folder. (White, 40%)
4. Shining volume layer. Edge feathering (3 pt) (White, 65%)
5. Icon’s outline. It’s a very important thing that guarantees that any color will have an outline (Gray, 50%)
6. Light outline around the perimeter. It makes the icon more crisp and vivid. (White, 25%)
7. Upper shining volume layer. Coupled with the shading makes the icon lit from above. (White, 40%)
8. Shadow from the icon. (Black, 25%)
9. Color backing. (Any color, 100%)

If you are not completely pleased with this boring sketch, feel free to download the source in AI format.

Next step is removing the backing from the icon (placing it next to it) and bitmapping the vector file in Photoshop. We got the magic pics that the secret mechanism of Iconza glues together into a single file simply by bonding them together.

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