AMD SurRound House - a 360-degree experience pushing multi-channel audio

AMD SurRound House at CES 2013, shows off a bunch of screens and even more speakers.

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CES 2013 - Something quite astounding shown off at CES 2013 was from AMD where they had a dark room called the AMD SurRound House. The SurRound House was filled with TVs and looks like it's quite incredible to experience.

Bill Herz, Chief Multimedia Technologist at AMD, lead people into a room that was filled with 10 "windows", or 1080p-capable TVs. These TVs when added up are pushing a resolution of 10,800x1920 - I'll let you sit there for a minute thinking of that resolution - which is 20 megapixels of imaging. The resolution is pumped at 30 frames per second, which is 600 megapixels per second.

It's not all just about video, either, as audio is an equal part of the SurRound House experience. There were four speakers per TV, providing 32 channels of audio showcasing discrete digital multi-point audio. The audio is to lead the visual experience, telling your brain where to expect to look based on the audio.

All of this showcases a 2.5-minute demo of a rusty cabin, with a bunch of stuff going on - helicopters flying around and then crashing, a cow, a hostage situation, a train, and more. Herz explains that SurRound House would be great for first-person shooters, or video conferencing - and is all done from a single, multi-GPU system.

AMD SurRound House - a 360-degree experience pushing multi-channel audio | TweakTown.com

One of the guys in the crowd asked the question, where Herz replied that it was a dual-GPU system powering SurRound House. As there are 10 displays, with current AMD GPUs limited to 6 displays per GPU.

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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