Slashdot Mirror
'Computer-On-Glass' Display
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."
- Coke Bottle PC
- Casserole PC
- Fish Tank PC
Wait, that last one's been done before...Just remind me to be excited again in three years. It's interesting, but not really news until there's, at the least, something to look at.
CRACK!
Yeah? You think so, buddy? Well, what if we decide not to use it, huh? What are YOU going to do about?
Who are you to say if we SHOULD use it or not...
Oh, hold on...that might not be what you meant.
Somethingwicked, you ignorant slut.
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
I'm curious about how these screens look. One of the issues with LCD is the screens appearance. They are often hard to view unless at a precise angle, if you wear glasses, especially polarized glasses, they are even harder to view. Touch screen films make them harder still to view and now they are embedding the actual circuitry in the display. What's the viewing like?
What is the difference between glass and the silicon crystal used in chips? Aren't they kind of similar?
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.
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".
I can't read japanese, but I believe this is a picture of what the article talks about.
sig.
Here is an overview of a case mod for such a system.
The processing power isn't great, but it did manage to support Wine.
I am a Karma Library.
Now not only can you get your business cards upside down, but you also have trouble telling if the company name really IS japanese, or if your just looking at it from the wrong side
Seriously though - I can really see this sort of technology being used on phone booths (if it can be made cheep enough not to matter if its vandalised now n then) to make them display moving images while still being able to see through the glass to see that theres someone inside
It reminds me of a scene from The Time Machine where the hero blokey was talking to the hologram-type-librarian who was shown walking around "inside" pieces of glass...
Well they're talking about ultra-high resolutions for things like photographs, and maps. Of course this is going to need huge storage and processing abiliy if they're going to reporduce photographic quality on anything larger than a really small display. I'm guessing that the display would probably be most useful if it could dynamically change resolution perhaps displaying several resolutions at once, to combine video (HDTV perhaps) a computer output at a "normal resolution" (90dpi or so) and a photo quality section (say 300dpi or better).
The abiliy to offload some of the processing on the display would be very helpful. I can see that being a very useful display. Still the idea of storage on the display sounds like Minority Report to me. Very cool.
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.
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.
..have a Beowolf cluster of Windows PC's !
*Runs for cover*
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
I would like to see this implented into contact lenses... Then we could have the interface wired to the optic nerve, and voila! instant computer enhanced vision....
Yahoo news has a picture of one.
Some HUD's don't project the image onto a surface, but actually project the image into your eye. I've seen a HUD built into eyeglasses frames, and it worked by creating a virtual screen of pixels on one retina that subtended some 30 degrees of the eye's field of view. Its screen was pretty cool, consisting of a row of fibers that vibrated back and forth at a known period and a timer that sent the right row of data to the fibers at the right time.
If you can make this cheap enough, imagine the possibilities! Integrate your TV in a glass wall, place info terminals and on-line shopping abilites in the windows of the shows, Integrate timer, thermometer, owen control, etc. in the glass on the kitchen fan... I like the possabilities of this!
<geek>
If nothing else, it looks like the PDAs they use in StarTrek are made out of a piece of glass with a handle, this means that we can actually manufacture 'em!
</geek>
to the term my computer just crashed...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
> Shit it! Shit it now! We *need* this thing!
:)
Ok this typo just made my morning. Thanks.
Mostly because Sir Mix-A-Lot said to "Put 'Em On The Glass".
Oh, wait... silicone, not silicon. Nevermind.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I don't see the significance of this.
Large Photo in Reuters.
See parent. That's okay, I have karma to burn when this gets modded down as well...
First off, MY username is somethingwicked. Was I trolling myself???
NO!!! I was making a simple joke about how I briefly misinterpretted the wording of the original comment.
Does no one remember the old SNL joke I referenced? So MAYBE it wasn't that good a joke, it sure wasn't a troll
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
There's plenty of reason.
If Palm could make a PDA with one piece of glass instead of glass and PCB, it could save money.
Every LCD I've seen on a shelf or in a picture has a casing on it. If that space had extra glass with a microprocessor embedded - your LCD screen could be higher quality for less money.
If you want to go to the extreme of the clear hand-held computer, you will probably still have an area to hold it by and maybe even some buttons for using it, which will provide space for circuits.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
What kind of windowmanager can you use? Imaging how cool the "transparent" xterms will look.
circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer.
Circuitry applied to glass is absolutely fascinating and all, but I want to know when they will come up with a good way for printing circuitry on skin. I want computerized skin damnit. One more potential reason to legitimize orgies..
Actually this is a common fallacy.
Glass is a crystalline structure, and does not warp with age.
The old windows which people often point to as being thicker at the bottom, are that way because the glass itself was irregular, and was installed with the heavy part at the bottom as it is more stable that way.
Or so I've been informed by a professional glass-blower who should know such things...
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
and I saw a rock hit the windshield with a loud crack. As one of the cracks slowly grew across the windshield, different parts of the car started malfunctioning until finally, the engine sputtered to a stop...
I can just hear the engineers... "Well we already have to put circuitry on the windshield for the HUD.. why don't we just go ahead and put the fuel injection computer and all the other electronics there as well..."
Hey, you think it wouldn't happen? I bet you thought that refrigerators would never have Internet access either...
--sg
Dupe posts are
A good Flat Panel already cost more than the computer it's hooked up too. When is someone going to come up with a technology that drives the price of flat panels down? IBM announced this new process last year, which I understood would be a more cost effective way to make LCDs that the velvet rub. Is anyone using this process yet in manufacturing?
Look here for a discussion...Is glass liquid or solid?
The crux is that glass's structure is not clearly solid or clearly liquid. The explanation for the windows that have thicker bottoms than tops is that the old processes for making glass involved blowing a large bubble and then spinning it. The glass had non-uniform thickness, and was typically installed with the heavy end down.
unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly.... enabling it to function like a computer
Sounds more like an iMac to me. (Note for the humourless: I am joking, I am aware of the difference).
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
You know, I think you actually DID troll yourself. And got yourself to reply. Lost karma and all. :) ;)
I'm not trying to bug you, I just think it's real funny... you should see the lighter side and recognize it as an acomplishment.
I, for one, salute you
(Not trolling, it's a joke... and if it isn't funny, hey, yours wasn't very funny either)
I can make my house windows out of these things and project happy people interacting on them. I can fool the whole neighborhood into thinking I have friends.
[sigh]
More information.
Personally I foresee this coming out a lot sooner than the electronic paper MIT's been talking about for at least five years.
- Portable (touch-type?) displays you can plug in anywhere. Download new library books by chapter (into temporary memory?).
- Restaurant tables? TV's: watch the game on your table. Virtual colouring books for kids
- Forget the coloured contacts. Glasses will come back in style as you get your own mini-HUD
The bad- Billboards, now every office window can be one!
- Spyglass-capabilities
- And you thought your palm broke easily when you dropped it
The uglyI think solar recharged PDA's made with this kind of technology would be the COOLEST thing! Just a *mostly* clear tablet with a display floating within.
Didn't we see something like this in Our Man Flint...? =)
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
They have had transistors on the glass for some time, sounds like just a natural evolution of the same sort of concept.
Put them on a crystal substrate instead of glass, then they would be shock resistant too.
Still cool stuff, dont misunderstand.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I don't like this. Think about the possibilities for DRM: this is basically Jack Valenti's wet dream. If the whole computer is directly on the glass, there's no place to jack in. No place to tap the signal. No place to do anything. DRM hardware implemented mere nanometers from the pixels. Let's hope this technology does not come to fruition.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
...has licensed the tech for their latest processor code named Transparent.
If I came across as pissed off in my reply, I wasn't at all!!! I immediately found the humor in the situation, but I really felt like a enough other ppl weren't. /.
:)
I too found it funny and all too typical for
And you're right, I did troll myself
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Once again we see technology imitating the movies. I ahve always waited for the glass stip cards that were shown in 2001, star trek and lots of anime which are processors or portions of.
I am just waiting till I can have the zoom map table from alien and starwars to view detailed maps - or anything else.
I do a lot of CAD work and would love to have a glass CAD table.
"With integrated circuits, for her pleasure."
some forms of glass that were used in old windows did in fact change shape i.e. flow over time - causing rippling in their surface.
who invented this. Actually it was a team of two. One of them was a victim of age descrimination by his work, so in his spare time, he and another guy developed this. All he could tell me is the hardest part was getting the material for the contacts to be the right size was the hardest part.(imagine worrying about a half a micron to make a good connection) The second hardest is that the underside of the chip is exposed to RF. You absolutely must buy shielded chips. The advantage of this is cheaper electronics. Glass is cheaper than PCB, especially when you don't need connectors. So watches and the like won't need the extra PCB. Keep in mind as well that glass traces are extremely hard to make more than 1 level. Usually, you have several sheets of glass with connectors on the sides instead. This makes it extremely difficult to put a 370pin CPU on one. CPU bus signals may not like the width or resistance or interference of the glass traces either.
:)
I saw a few posts argueing about heat problems. You could still put a heatsink on the chips. PCB doesn't conduct heat all that well either. PCB's on the other hand do block more RF. And photons hitting the traces on on a PCB is less of a problem than on glass
All in all, it's a very neat technology and is very interesting. It will save manufacturing costs a lot, maybe even in LCD monitors/LCD TV's or even hand helds. It's not going to be used for a fast computer because the technology to put traces on glass isn't nearly as good as copper that you will find in the average PCB.
At least that was the case the last time I checked. There might be some good conductors for glass now.
Karma Clown
People who use glass computer shouldn't throw stones.
:)
Sorry, just had to day it
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
You are quite fundamentally WRONG. And a moron.
The glass does NOT change shape, it never did, if it does in the future the human race will have been LONG extinct and won't notice. Glass is warped in old buildings because the techniques for creating glass windows mostly SUCKED. So the glass started out warped. The bases are thicker so the glass won't FALL OUT. The only time I have actually glass with melt lines is after a massive housefire when we were cleaning the place out.
Glass MIGHT flow on a geological time scale on the order of a billion years or so, but hell, given that much time what doesn't?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
...but it's still quite a ways to go from Neal Stephenson's phenomenoscopic spectacles on Miss Whatshername, the court secretary, in The Diamond Age.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Buttons aren't a problem, you can vary capacitance with flexion. (Is that a word?) You can get clear plastic calculators for use on overhead projectors...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wow - haven't we seen this story already - tomorrow!
/. is becoming like Minority Report ;-)
Now the whole of
A little planning goes a long way...
Give this man a cupie doll!