As Siggraph 2008 winds down, it’s time for me to take one last, brief mention of some of the more interesting technology and developments at the show. Be sure to read upcoming issues of millimeter and Digital Content Producer magazines for more in-depth information.

While some may claim that there is nothing new at the show, if you walk the aisles with an open mind you’re sure to find trends and new gear that fits the bill. more

Laptops are on track to soon replace desktop units as the most popular personal computer type. Over the past couple of years, more powerful mobile CPUs and GPUs have made lighter weight laptops prime candidates to become the machines of choice for pro graphics and NLE users too.

While they didn’t have a booth on the show floor, Dell still garnered interest by the introduction of two potent new members of its line of pro-oriented, ISV-certified mobile workstations, which turned up on display in Intel’s and NVIDIA’s booths. more

Unlike the slowly changing, monolithic market for CPUs, the development of graphics chips and cards looks chaotic, with chip designs, products, and companies coming in and out of the market at a near furious pace over the decades since the first graphics technology delivered in 1960.

Over the past eight years or so, however, two companies have come to dominate the market for discrete chips and cards: ATI (since 2006 a division of AMD) and NVIDIA. While the companies continue to slug it out, most everyone else had fallen to the wayside. Now, the two companies own 98 percent of the discrete GPU business, according to on Peddie Research. more

Until recently, most laser scanning systems—whether for use in films, games, or other applications–were pretty big pieces of gear, designed for capturing a car, or on a slightly smaller scale, a full body. While some companies did make small desktop rigs, these mainly captured small objects—say the size of a soda can—that had to be placed on a revolving stage attached to a workstation. Pretty complicated for the most part.

At the show, Quebec-base Creaform, which develops and makes the Handyscan 3D line-up of handheld and self-positioning laser scanners, debuted an innovative, lightweight handheld 3D color scanner that only needs to be attached to laptop to deliver near real-time scans. more

I didn’t get what was new and useful about HP’s DreamColor technology when it debuted for monitors at NAB 2008. (DreamColor was introduced in 2007, but aimed initially at color printing solutions.) There seemed to be a lot of noise being made for better color rendition, but what was exciting or new about that?

I think I’m starting to get it. Attending a talk by HP and a group of DreamWorks artists and technicians–their partners in developing the technology–the differences in the crisp colors and black blacks of the new 24-inch HP DreamColor LP2480zx display and a standard LCD at its side were remarkable.

The new display is described as “true 30-bit”, which means it can choose from a range of over 1 billion colors to display. The result? No banding, and rendering of colors subtle enough to best reflect what the artists want to see on the big screen. more

Suddenly it seems there’s a graphics card horserace again: At the show, ATI jumped back into the race with Nvidia, announcing two strong contenders in its pro line of graphics cards (Radeon is the consumer/gamer card line), the ATI FirePro V5700 and ATI FirePro V3700.

Also new: a re-branded name, from FireGL—the name kept from the purchase by ATI of the pro card line from a German graphics card manufacturer in 2001—to ATI FirePro.

For quite some time, ATI had made graphics cards that other manufacturers could take aim at as the best of the bunch. Most card makers dropped off though in the tough economics of that market, leaving Nvidia and ATI to challenge and leapfrog each other throughout the late 1990s and into the new millennium. Things got a little shaky after AMD’s purchase of ATI in 2006, however, with AMD’s troubles threatening to pull ATI down. more

In scheduling a 9am press conference on the opening day of the Siggraph, Sony lost no time in providing an answer to the many who–over the years since technology was first announced—questioned the value of the Cell processor initiative.

The joint venture with IBM and Toshiba to develop a new type of media-savvy processor initially appeared in the PlayStation 3, but seemed adrift for any other applications, since the hardware design was significantly different from the legacy x86 the computer industry has grown comfortable with. (The Cell processor—referred to by the consortium as the Cell Broadband Engine microprocessor , or Cell/B.E., is a relatively unusual design that combines a general-purpose IBM POWERPC processor core that communicates with eight special-purpose, on-chip DSP cores.) more

Founded in Austin in 1998, BOXX Technologies is using this Siggraph to celebrate its 10th anniversary with a number of prize contests, giveaways, and special edition hot-rodded workstations, to name just some of the reasons why the booth seems to have a sense of excitement.

The company holds a special place in the hearts and minds of those creatives who spend their days in the trenches creating the effects seen in many top feature films and television commercials, says Francois Wolf, director of marketing at BOXX. “A lot of companies have fallen off the cliff,” says Wolf. “We haven’t, because we don’t try to offer everything, but choose to do a few things very well.” more

AMD has struggled over the past year with production and marketing snafus, and some worried that the well-regarded ATI FireGL series cards would be in trouble. After all, AMD, which spent $5.4 billion to buy graphics card maker ATI last year, had long-time ATI CEO Dave Orton leave the combined company this past month. (While some speculated that there were problems over the buyout, Orton has only said that he was tired of the long-distance commute from his Ontario home.)

No need to worry, it seems. At the show, AMD announced five new ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators, ranging from the $299 ATI FireGL V3600 to the first card to support 2GB of RAM, the top-of-the-line $2799 ATI FireGL V8650. more

One of the great joys of each Siggraph is the hodge-podge of hopeful students and professionals that gather in the juried Emerging Technologies pavilion. Described by the Siggraph organizers as chock full of “Digital innovations that change the way we work, live, and play”, the exhibits are mostly fresh out of the R&D labs and university computer science departments. (See http://www.siggraph.org/s2007/attendees/etech/ for more.)

In the darkened hall, you‘ll find pools of light shining on hardware and software galore: 3D displays, robotics, input devices, interaction techniques, computer vision, sensors, audio, speech, biometrics, wearable computing, scientific visualization, and more. more