Scalable devices

Abstract

In computer science in general and in particular the field of high performance computing and supercomputing the term scalable plays an important role. It indicates that a piece of hardware, a concept, an algorithm, or an entire system scales with the size of the problem, i.e., it can not only be used in a very specific setting but it's applicable for a wide range of problems. From small scenarios to possibly very large settings. In this spirit, there exist a number of fixed areas of research on scalability. There are works on scalable algorithms, scalable architectures but what are scalable devices? In the context of this chapter, we are interested in a whole range of display devices, ranging from small scale hardware such as tablet computers, pads, smart-phones etc. up to large tiled display walls. What interests us mostly is not so much the hardware setup but mostly the visualization algorithms behind these display systems that scale from your average smart phone up to the largest gigapixel display walls.