RAMTEK CORPORATION 1525 Atteberry Lane San Jose, CA 95131 408/954-2700 FAX: 408/954-0118 Company contact: Michael Tyler Vice President, Marketing Ramtek Corporation (408) 954-2700 Agency contacts: William Orrange Janis Ulevich levich & Orrange, Inc. (415) 329-1590 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NEW 'MILLENNIUM' IMAGING SYSTEM FROM RAMTEK TURNS UNIX WORKSTATIONS INTO IMAGE PROCESSING COMPUTERS; CONNECTS VIA EITHER VME BUS OR SCSI INTERFACE SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 7, 1990 -- A new system that can turn a UNIX-based workstation into a powerful image processing system suited for remote sensing, geophysical, medical and other imaging-oriented applications has been introduced by Ramtek Corporation. The Ramtek Millennium is a high-performance, high-resolution subsystem designed to accelerate the processing and visual display of technical and scientific data. Millennium connects to a UNIX workstation via either a VME bus or SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) link, offloading the critical image processing and visualization functions from the workstation. Floating-Point Accuracy Vital to Scientific APplications Millennium is designed for image processing applications where mathematical accuracy is of paramount importance, according to Jim Swanson, Ramtek president and CEO. "UNIX workstations, designed and optimized for such uses as computer-aided design and engineering, typically offer very strong integer performance," Swanson said. "But they're less than adequate in providing the floating-point performance which is critical to computational fluid dynamics, medical research, microbiology and other highly math-intensive applications." Furthermore, he said, "workstations by themselves often lack the large memory capacity essential to store and visualize the real data used in these applications -- for example, satellite images on storm front behavior used by a weather forecaster." Millennium's high-speed architecture performs floating-point calculations at the rate of 80 megaFLOPS (million floating-point operations per second), and provides up to 16 megabytes of local memory and 30-megabit-per-second local buses. This allows the system to perform in a single operation Fast Fourier Transforms of images as large as 1024 by 1024 pixels. Dedicated Millennium hardware also accelerates other complex imaging operations such as convolutions, histogram equalization, look-up table manipulation and frequency domain filtering. First System to Use Standard Image Processing Environment Millennium incorporates the Imaging Kernel System (IKS) software developed by the University of Lowell (Mass.), which is fully compliant with the proposed ANSI standard Programmer's Imaging Kernel (PIK). An object-oriented environment for image processing, manipulation and analysis, IKS offers a rich, robust tool set for the research scientist or third-party application developer. An October 1989 agreement with the University of Lowell allows Ramtek to market products based on IKS. According to Swanson, "vendors have previously had to use proprietary image processing solutions because no standard existed in this area. Ramtek is the first company to introduce a low-cost commercial imaging product incorporating IKS, which was designed to address the need for a portable, device-independent imaging environment." IKS features include geometric and area-of-interest operations, intensity distribution, morphologic operations and feature extraction. In addition, Millennium can internally store and process images of up to 2048 by 1024 pixels in its large frame buffer, and can display images of 1280 by 1024 pixels in grey-scale or color. A 60-Hz (non-interlaced) refresh rate provides a bright, high-quality, flicker-free image. Accelerated X Window System Performance Millennium provides advanced graphics display capabilities through the industry-standard X Window System, but at accelerated performance levels made possible through the use of the Texas Instruments TMS34020 graphics processor operating at 10 MIPS (millions of instructions per second). Among available operations are high-speed vector drawing, fast polygon generation, pattern vectors and filled areas. Acting as a high-performance X Window display server, Millennium lets the user choose his preferred Graphical User Interface (GUI) standard from among Motif, Openlook, NewWave, DecWindows and others. In addition, Millennium employs five independent look-up tables -- as opposed to the single table in most workstations -- to maximize the usefulness of color map manipulation in classifying imaging data. One look-up table is used exclusively by the graphical user interface; the other four allow the user to independently manipulate color in each window without negative effects on the other windows. VME and SCSI Intefaces for Connection to Any Platform Two distinct connection methods allow Millennium to be used with virtually any hardware platform, enabling the user to standardize on image processing tools across his organization. For workstations with VME bus backplanes, Millennium is available as a three-board set that plugs directly into the backplane. For non-VME workstations, Millennium comes in a stand-alone seven-slot chassis that uses an SCSI interface to communicate at high speeds with the host computer's central processor. Millennium can share the same SCSI channel with other attached devices, allowing direct data transfers to disks or printers without adversely affecting workstation performance. Pricing and Availability Millennium will be in beta-test sites in March, with production shipments beginning in April. In a stand-alone seven-slot chassis with SCSI interface, Millennium is priced at $25,995 (single quantity). In a three- board set that plugs into a VME backplane, the price is $20,995 (single quantity). Both configurations include a TMS34020-based graphics board, a TMS34082/TMS34020-based imaging board, a 20-bit memory video board, and an IKS software license. Ramtek Corporation, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., designs and manufactures high-performance imaging and graphics display systems and peripherals.