IBM SHIPS WORLD'S HIGHEST-RESOLUTION COMPUTER DISPLAY.

IBM (NYSE:IBM) is shipping the world's clearest computer display -- 12-times sharper than current displays -- 10 years sooner than industry experts said it was possible.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is the first customer to use this breakthrough display. IBM plans to ship the displays to other customers in 2001 and license the patented technologies to other manufacturers.

With 200 pixels per inch and more than 9 million pixels in total on its 22-inch screen, the new display is as clear as an original photograph and 4.5-times sharper than top-of-the-line high-definition television screens.

Applications for this technology are wide-ranging, encompassing any field that requires extremely high resolution images -- telemedicine, weather forecasting, publishing and graphic design, product development, satellite mapping and more.

This technology could eventually make its way into displays for laptops, desktops, handhelds and other computing devices, making the viewing of video and digital photos a completely new experience.

"When IBM showed a prototype of this technology in 1998, many in the industry predicted this display wouldn't be ready for mass production until at least 2010," said Ross Young, President of Display Search, a leading display market research firm in Austin, Texas. "The technology can change the way computers are used in a wide range of areas where extremely high-resolution images are required, and I am impressed that IBM is able to produce them today."

The Livermore Lab will use the displays to study the operation and aging of nuclear weapons using 3-D model simulations that are crunched by the world's fastest supercomputer -- the ASCI White machine IBM shipped to the Lab in July.

The resolution on this screen is so precise it can be used instead of wall-sized theater screens, allowing expert analysts to operate independently at their desktops. Lawrence Livermore is expected to receive about 10 more of these high-resolution displays by mid-2001 to further this research.

"The success of the IBM ASCI White supercomputer to simulate the physics of nuclear weapons has presented another massive challenge for our Lab: finding a practical way to interpret and understand the enormous amounts of data generated by the supercomputers and the advanced computer codes they employ," said Dr. David M. Cooper, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory CIO and Associate Director for Scientific Computing. "To study this data properly, we need to view and understand these 3-D visual models. The resolution offered by the IBM displays makes that possible on the desktop."

Users who need to view large volumes of complex data will benefit from the high-resolution and high-content displays, significantly reducing eye strain and the need for printing hard copies.

IBM has been working on this new display technology in its research labs in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Yamato, Japan, since 1995. The new active matrix liquid crystal display is based on research that allowed the IBM team to use aluminum instead of molybdenum and tungsten, metals traditionally used in displays. IBM has also demonstrated the use of copper in experimental displays and plans to use copper in future display technologies. Aluminum and copper are better conductors and make low-cost, high-resolution possible.