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The Royal Institute Of Technology, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH, is the largest university of engineering in Sweden. The university has more than 10 000 undergraduate students, 1000 postgraduate students and a staff of 3200 people. KTH conducts excellent education and research of a broad spectrum - from natural sciences to all branches of technology. The department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science is one of KTH's largest and houses a number of national centers of excellence including The Center for Parallel Computers, PDC, the major Swedish High-Performance Computing Center. In terms of hardware, the main resource of the center is a 442 node (884 processor) Dell Xenon cluster system. In addition there are several smaller Linux clusters of different size.
The visualization laboratory at the center houses the unique VR-cube, which was the world's first VR-facility with total immersion.
Experience and expertise
PDC has more than 14 years experience in high-performance computing and has been using high-performance VR since 1996. PDC also coordinated the EC-funded Technology Transfer Node PDCTTN. PDC also developed a new audio system for the VR-cube and software for sound source modelling in immersive environments.
Short resume of the key persons
Associate director PDC, M.Sc. Gert Svensson, coordinator of Uni-Verse project; one of the founders of PDC has more than 15 years experience in research management mostly in high-performance computing projects. He was heavily involved in the formation of the PDC EC-funded Technology Transfer Node (PDCTTN) and initiated and supervised several activities. He was project leader for the design and installation of the world’s first 6-sided Cave .He is currently managing the VR-research at PDC. He has been involved in several European projects, including Virtual Reality projects such as 3demo and VitualFies and projects in High-Performance Computing such as Neurogenerator and Neurodisseminator.
Eskil Steenberg, computer game developer and 3D artist with over 10 years of 3D Graphics experience. As an employee of the Interactive Institute (1999-2001) he specialized in real-time 3D and developed the Verse platform, as the main architect and group leader of the Verse-team. In January 2001 he headed a first public demonstration of the Verse platform jointly with Ericsson Telecom and Swedish Television at the NATPE conference, in Las Vegas. He has presented scientific papers on 3D graphics, e.g. at Eurographics 2001 and Game Developers Conference 2004.
