I haven't been able to dig up specifics, so hopefully someone with more knowledge can add to this, but the CNN "Magic Wall" is an 82" LCD Multi-Touch Display made by Perceptive Pixel — originally a privately owned company founded by Jeff Han that was acquired by Microsoft in July this year.

As far as I can tell, it's powered by an NVIDIA Quadro 6000 workstation. Not sure about the software, but it's likely custom-tweaked.

Perceptive Pixel's tech was originally developed for military applications (and the military does use their displays), but you can see why newsrooms would swoon over tech like this — especially for election coverage.

Here are a few links to related articles that might provide you with more information:

Wikipedia article on Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-Touch_Collaboration_Wall

Perceptive Pixel's page on their 82" display: http://perceptivepixel.brandgreenhouse.com/products/82-lcd-m...

NVIDIA's Quadro 6000 page: http://www.nvidia.com/object/product-quadro-6000-us.html

2008 WaPo article on CNN's Magic Wall: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02...

Jeff Han TED Talk from 2006: http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_han_demos_his_breakthrough_tou...