University of Wales to offer advanced visualisation and design to SMEs
1 min read
See3D, a new venture by the University of Wales bringing high-performance visualisation to academics, is also targeting manufacturing SMEs that could not otherwise access the technology.
The centre of excellence is due to be formally opened this Autumn, and will house a fully immersive hemispherium for 3D stereo and virtual reality presentations, as well as a multi-projector flat screen theatre all powered concurrently by a high performance SGI visualisation solution.
The latter has already been running on the on the Aberystwyth campus from temporary accommodation for a few months, using a 28-processor 12-pipe Silicon Graphics Prism Extreme visualisation system with 6Tb of disk storage, and three Fakespace PowerWall displays.
See3D is being funded by the Welsh Assembly and the European Community, and SGI has been involved since the initial funding stage in 2001. “The University knew they wanted to provide a visualisation service for their academic staff and industrial partners: they knew some of the problems and they had a lot of questions; but what they didn’t have was the answers. That’s our role in the process – to turn those problems into answers,” says Julian Bailey from SGI Professional Services.
It’s worth noting that unlike many similar university-based facilities, as well as providing access to visualisation technology, See3D aims to include designing and developing affordable value-added virtual reality and visualisation solutions for users.
To make that work See3D is employing a full-time team of software and hardware engineers as well as business analysts. The team says it will be using the combination of SGI hardware and visualisation software to provide a range of bespoke solutions.
“There are many SMEs throughout Wales and the rest of the British Isles who either do not have or who want to supplement their visualisation capabilities,” says Bill Malkin, business development manager of See3D.
“For example, a manufacturing company might be using CAD systems but to ramp up to bigger and better things. There are also lots of companies that don’t have anything at all, but could benefit from visualisation in one way or another – for prototyping, new product development, marketing their products or services, helping to facilitate their own businesses etc.”
