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Historical
view
Computer
design lab background in image display electronics design.
Computer
design lab was founded at Moscow State University Nuclear
Physics Institute Microelectronics Department at 1985.
Since that time, for about 10 years (until 1995) we
were designing computer systems with enhanced graphic
capabilities. Among them were:
The
first Soviet personal computer "Korvet", adopted by
the government as educational computer and manufactured
in quantity of 500 000 pieces. This computer was designed
at the same time when IBM PC appeared and had much more
powerful graphics then CGA video adapter of the first
PCs.
 "Korvet", 1986
After
that we have designed workstation with parallel architecture
"Kwant-16" for Soviet nuclear energy industry, and several
high speed accelerators with graphics capabilities for
Russian academy of sciences. The latest one - "Corvette-860
RGB", was manufactured in small quantities in 1995.
This was a single board Unix workstation, implemented
as a plug in board for usual PC. It had processing power
of super computer Cray I, and high speed graphics with
up to 1600 x 1200 resolution, up to 16 million colors
and rendering capacity of 2000 polygons per 50 Hz frame.
It was used for gas and hydro dynamics simulations and
other computer intensive tasks.
 "Corvette-860 RGB"
After
the 'Iron curtain' fall we decided to leave computer
design field.
The
rich experience in video processing and the fact that
most of our engineers are physicists by education, and
before computer design lab was founded, were working
in plasma physics, allowed us to move to the plasma
display design.
In
1994 we got a contract from American company to design
driving electronics system for 21" AC plasma TV. In
1995 we made first prototype of TV set using 21" Fujitsu
AC PDP.
 21" TV set prototype, 1995
Soon
after that, we analyzed the situation and came to conclusion
not to compete with big companies, investing hundreds
of millions dollars per year in home plasma TV market.
We
decided to move to big screens, based on tile approach.
These are plasma screens of about 3m diagonal, constructed
with separate plasma panels - 'tiles'. This approach
was known in Russia; there were several models of DC
plasma alpha-numeric billboards. But these billboards
were not capable of real quality TV and computer image.
In
1995 we contacted Russian company, "Plasma" institute
in the city of Ryazan. At that moment they were designing
AC type of PDP 'tile'. These tiles are about 200 x 200mm
with 64 x 64 color pixels. "Plasma" institute asked
us to design digital interface between their plasma
module and a computer to show still images and computer
animations.
 0.6 x 0.4 m prototype, 1996
We
made first prototype of AC plasma tile screen based
on Ryazan AC plasma modules. This prototype was connected
to the computer through printer port and was capable
to display photo images and slow computer animations.
But the quality of the image, and system stability were
rather poor, this forced us to make our own design of
plasma module, based on our experience, we got when
designing 21" plasma TV, which greatly differed from
the module, designed in Ryazan "Plasma" institute.
 prototype image
In
two years our department made a lot of theoretical and
experimental investigations covered in the book 'Research
of generation of intensive ultraviolet emission in gas
discharges for efficient excitation of phosphors' published
by Moscow State University in 1997, and made our implementation
of driving electronics, which allowed to dramatically
improve the quality of the image.
As
a result, in 1997 we designed our own driving electronics
and in 1998 made a fragment of full size screen, capable
to display true color, dynamic TV and computer images,
which was shown at many exhibitions in 1998 - 1999.
 Fragment, 1998
This
fragment was driven from personal computer by individual
twisted pairs for each module, which was unacceptable
for full size screen, having 12 x 9 = 108 modules. The
quality of still picture was quite good, but we had
some problems with TV image acquisition. Computer image
at this fragment should have been transmitted to the
screen by a special program. We also had some problems
of electromagnetic interference.
In
1999, the "Polyscreen - S Company", a member
of "Mercury Electronics Group" Holding was established,
and this new company made all the further design of
plasma screens. As a result, in the beginning of 2000
first full size screen with completely new control electronics
was manufactured.
 1st full size screen
More
technical details about the screen can be found in "AC plasma tile screen brief technical description"
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