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Tiny Displays Stunted Growing pains beset miniature-display industry By Craig Matsumoto, EE Times San Jose, Calif. -- The nascent market for miniature displays--a.k.a. display chips--is experiencing some growing pains. Entering the market with an approach whose most distinguishing characteristic is its lack of novel technology, startup S-Vision hopes to clear the hurdles to volume production that have bedeviled some developers of more exotic mini-display designs. One of those companies, Silicon Light Machines Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), recently laid off about a third of its staff in a redirection of its effort to bring its Grating Light Valve technology to market. Targeting the market for high-resolution projection displays, S-Vision (San Jose) is shipping samples of preproduction SVGA (800 x 600-pixel resolution) screens on a build-to-order basis, with volume production scheduled to kick off in the fourth quarter. The initial recipients of the company's Micro LCDs are primarily projector companies, with a few monitor companies and PC companies in the mix. Like many other manufacturers of mini displays, S-Vision relies on liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) technology. But its reflective-display technology is based on conventional twisted-nematic (TN) LC material and CMOS silicon. By contrast, other mini-display makers--such as Silicon Light Machines and Texas Instruments Inc.--are using exotic materials or such novel technologies as micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). S-Vision sees pitfalls to that approach. "MEMS displays have a custom process, and the guys who are putting down PDLC [polymer-dispersed LC] have trouble with contrast ratio and need higher voltage; they can't use 3.3 or 5 V," said Ray Pinkham, strategic marketing manager at S-Vision. Pinkham acknowledged that TN-on-CMOS "might not be the ultimate performance you can conceive of, but it takes the path that leverages off the momentum in the industry [behind] CMOS and TN LC, which virtually all the LCDs use. Other approaches will have to develop step by step; our approach leverages off what's already going on." That's "a sensible approach, a low-risk approach, and it should be a relatively straightforward path to at least making something that will work," said Chuck McLaughlin of the McLaughlin Consulting Group (Menlo Park, Calif.). Labeling the S-Vision strategy "a long-overdue technological thrust," McLaughlin observed that "everybody's been trying all this really exotic stuff, but nobody has bet the farm on [TN LC and CMOS]. It may not result in the very best display--maybe not be as fast as ferroelectric, for example--but it's got to be very close." Others disagree. David Mentley, director of industry research at Stanford Resources (San Jose, Calif.), said it's hard to discern what the "unique selling proposition" is for S-Vision's Micro LCD. Citing pending patents, the company declined to discuss the particulars of what it considers its unique selling proposition: an optical architecture that it claims will beat the competition in contrast and brightness while allowing less-expensive optical components to be used. (Next article.)
[This article comes from EE Times in a joint cooperative effort with the Motley Fool. For more articles like it, please look at Fool's Gold every weekend or simply go to the Fool's Gold Mine and page through our back issues, which all have clever and cool EE Times articles in them.]
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