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'Computer-On-Glass' Display

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the good-enough-to-lick dept.

bfries writes "Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. It uses Sharp's continuous grain silicon (CGS) technology and should be used on some products in 2005."

6 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Glass/Silicon by pubjames · · Score: 3, Interesting


    What is the difference between glass and the silicon crystal used in chips? Aren't they kind of similar?

  2. Heat dissipation by mortis_aeturnus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Glass is a very very poor heat conductor. Having anything running at a very low temperature on this would pale any laptop overheating horror stories. This would definately limit the power of the processor you can use. This would make a nice (and slower than 4.77mhz) palm top but nothing more.

    1. Re:Heat dissipation by Oculus+Habent · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They didn't say they were planning on having an Pentium 4 2.8GHz-on-glass - the processing probably won't be very powerful for some time.

      Meanwhile wouldn't it be nice to have a half-inch thick high resolution LCD TV?

      --
      That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
  3. Slow Glass by geoff+lane · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When storage density reaches about 60 Gbits/sqin
    you can store the all the data for a single pixal for a 90min movie within the area occupied by the pixal.

    Once that's possible you can create dedicated movie "books".

  4. 1 GHz limit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Reading up on the CGS link, it looks like the technology has a medium-imposed 1 GHz hard upper limit, since it's not really a single silicon crystal, but a set of crystals ("grains" in MatSci speak) in which some effort is made to blur the lines between the grains (hence "continuous"). My guess is some sort of annealing process. The grain boundaries become
    a problem at 1 GHz.

  5. Brain fart... by Gruneun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What if the screen was made up of two pieces of glass, with water being passed between them? Water is obviously a proven way to transfer heat and it would be invisible to the user.