SBIR Phase I: The Media Fusion Project: A Distributed Architecture for Mega-Pixel Displays

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop an architecture to support the management and display of media on a new class of emerging displays. The proposed architecture is a new approach to supporting displays with the ability to 1) reconfigure themselves as different display components (projectors) are repositioned and 2) scale to potentially hundreds of millions of pixels. This will be accomplished using a unique distributed framebuffer abstraction that allows pixels to be managed over large clusters of machines and a subscription model that supports reconfiguration. The proposed Media Fusion Architecture has the potential to significantly impact the way in which the world interacts with media. The proposed approach will also have impact on several scientific communities including distributed rendering, media distribution, and memory management. The techniques that will be introduced are complementary of approaches by those communities but are unique in that they address the challenges of a cluster of display devices. Beyond the tremendous potential for economic and scientific impact, the Media Fusion Architecture will introduce advanced display technologies to users who have never had access to them before. Examples include, display walls in the classroom, conference rooms, teleconferencing, and even the home.