London-based Expanscape has developed a seven-screen transportable PC, and is surely in line for a mention, if not a prize in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Click for higher resolution
As pictured, the luggable comes with four 17.3″ UltraHD panels, two in landscape mode and two in portrait and three 7″ with 1,920 × 1,200 resolution.
The Aurora 7 tucked up (Source Expanscape) Click for higher resolution
The displays. slip and slide and rotate into various pockets behind the main screen, except for the one in the lower right corner of the keyboard. That screen is a multi-touch device and can be used as a system monitor. The keyboard itself is a full 104-key tactile-feedback unit.
The system weighs 10kg ~ 22 pounds, and can run on its internal batteries (although Gizmodo has reported that they only last an hour – editor). There are 4 internal NICs, 2 which are wireless.
It is powered by either an AMD 3950x (16 Cores/32 Threads) or an Intel i9-10900k (10 Cores/20 Threads) in our A7 M3 CPU with up to 128GB o Ram, and 16TB of SSD. A single Nvidia GTX 2070 series GPU drives all the displays. The company is experimenting with the GTX 2080 to see I they can run it on battery.
The Aurora 7 M3 (Source Expanscape) Click for higher resolution
The A7 M3 is the third iteration of the Aurora 7 Prototype. The company is planning to provide demonstrations of other prototypes in the near future. (Very near, we hear! Editor)
What do we think?
You know what I think—I love it. I’d love to see one and play with it. The screen configuration will be great for data users, but the number and thickness of the bezels will will probably not appeal to graphics content creators.
The seven screens deliver over 40 megapixels—40 in a notebook configuration! That’s damn close to my 4K-8K-4K 53mp configuration which is testing the bandwidth capacity of the AMD AIB I’m using. No doubt the 2070 is giving those screens in the A7 M3 all its got. Nvidia specifies the GTX 2070 at a max resolution of 7680 × 4320 which is only 33.18 mpixels, so somehow Expanscape is squeezing an extra 6.8 megapixels or ~ 20% which is beyond binning range, so the mega-screen Londoners may have some magic. (I suspect lower frame rates. I had a notebook that was not rated to UltraHD when I got my first monitor of that resolution, but the notebook worked fine at 30Hz – Editor)
One of the applications for this system is as a mobile security operations center, another could be a plant process monitoring system. In any case it wins the prize the most screens on a laptop.
The runner up is Razer’s 2017 ‘Project Valerie’
The prototype used a GTX 1080,had three 4K IGZO screens, and weighed between 10 and 12 pounds. They showed it at CES 2017. (JP)
As one of the many commentators on this development said, “I’d love to see someone open up this notebook on an aeroplane!”. From the images, it looks as though the main display on the notebook is glossy, which I wouldn’t like. (BR)
Dr. Jon Peddie is a recognized pioneer in the graphics industry, President of Jon Peddie Research and named one of the most influential analysts in the world. He lectures at numerous conferences and universities on topics pertaining to graphics technology and the emerging trends in digital media technology. Former President of Siggraph Pioneers, he serves on advisory board of several conferences, organizations, and companies, and contributes articles to numerous publications. In 2015, he was given the Life Time Achievement award from the CAAD society Peddie has published hundreds of papers, to date; and authored and contributed to eleven books, His most recent, “Augmented Reality, where we all will live.” Jon has been elected to the ACM Distinguished Speakers program.
