World's First Remote Graphics Unit

Montreal-headquarted Canada's Matrox Graphics Inc. on 22/Feb/06 announced and launched Extio? F1400 (see the right picture, source: here) the world's first remote graphics unit, according to a press release on the company's website.

With this solution, the user interface of the computer ? the keyboard, mouse, monitors, audio peripherals, and graphics hardware ? are separated from the rest of the computer by up to 250 meters (820 feet) of fiber-optic cable. Designed for professional applications, this product supports up to 4 digital or analog monitors at a time, and has passive (fanless) cooling.

The versatile Matrox Extio F1400 remote graphics unit (RGU) has a Matrox-designed graphics chip, 128 MB of graphics memory, dual-LC connector for fiber-optic cable, 4 DVI-I monitor connectors, 6 USB 2.0 ports (4 in front, 2 in back), integrated audio hardware, an optical connector for digital audio output, and analog audio connectors for a microphone input, line input, and line output. To meet different slot requirements, Matrox separately offers PCI or PCI Express (PCIe) fiber-optic interface cards for Extio products.

With reference to this new product for professionals, Engadget's Ryan Block somehow disdained: Basically it's a remote graphics unit that shifts your desktop experience from right next to your box to wherever the hell you want it within 820 feet, via high speed fiber optics back to the mothership. No, we can tell already this graphics system isn't really meant for Dooming it up or anything like that, but for a desktop extension without a thin-client solution, the Extio F1400 is probably as sophisticated (and expensive) a solution as you're gonna find.

Technorati tags: Extio F1400, Matrox, Graphics, Computer