Sharp Unveils Glass Computer

thug writes "Moscow Times: Sharp Corp., Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays, unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. Shumpei Yamazaki, president of unlisted Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Ltd., Sharp's partner in the project, compared the challenge of putting processor circuitry on glass to "building a skyscraper on rubber." But he said glass offered several advantages over silicon, including lower temperatures for production, so that faster metal gates could be used for its transistors."

Comments

The SHARP press release

[jukal]

is here. It has much more interesting content, including some specifications, the fact that they have filed 330 related patent applications, some info about the process of making the displays and finally some images :) Now someone who wants to ride around and avoid breaking any of the 330 patents will have to be very careful. Infact, some might think that Sharp is actually slowing down the development with this invention and making it harder for others to enter the market.

Re:Redundancy on multiple levels

[KecCu]

I wonder what a redundant reply to a redundant post would be. Informative?

Duplicated Earlier than Usual

[ari_j]

Exactly as predicted.

Other stories on Glass Computers

[randomErr]

Building a Computer the Size of a Credit Card
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,106247,0 0.asp

Sharp is showing off an LCD with a built-in CPU, and plans to use it in a new breed of mobile display devices by 2005.

Sharp and its partner Semiconductor Energy Laboratory unveiled Tuesday what the companies claim to be a world-first prototype of an LCD with an 8-bit CPU on its glass substrate.

Sharp runs computer on piece of glass
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/22/10345614 95445.html

Japan's leading liquid crystal display maker Sharp Corp said yesterday it had made an "epoch-making" step toward making ultra-flat "sheet computers" after it succeeded in running a computer on a tiny piece of glass.

The prototype it unveiled was a functioning tiny circuit board - from a Sharp central processing unit (CPU) originally made in 1977 - imprinted on a piece of glass some 15 millimetres square and one millimetre thick.

Running a PC on a piece of glass
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/178311.htm

Japan's leading liquid crystal display maker Sharp Corp. said on Tuesday it had made an "epoch-making" step toward making ultra-flat "sheet computers" after it succeeded in running a computer on a tiny piece of glass.

The prototype it unveiled was a functioning tiny circuit board - from a Sharp central processing unit (CPU) originally made in 1977 - imprinted on a piece of glass some 15 millimeters (0.6 inches) square and one millimeter thick.