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

I see a connection.

[WilliamsDA]

Sharp... glass computer. Does anyone else see the connection?

uh hunh

[Easy2RememberNick]

Well I have a short attention span anyway, I didn't even notice.
Maybe they're trying to be like CNN Headline news, the same thing over and over and over and over... ..what was I talking about?

This is all part of the karma system

[bLanark]

How many times have /. rejected your write-up of a story and posted an inferior version instead? (Generally for one with unneccessary urls like the home page of the news site as well as a link to the story on the news site; who can't edit out story.pl?artid=423423 to get to http://www.site.com/ ?)

Well, this is the payback. Simply note a good story, and try and slip it past /. submission editors a few times to make them look like dweebs. (Hey, has anyone managed to get the same story three times?)

It also gives you a chance to steal those insightful comments from the first article post and max out on karma without getting "-1 redundant", so we all can win! - Last to +5 insightful is a dinosaur egg!

Whoah

[gvonk]

This repeat was predicted by ari_j.

Weird.

Though, you could say that for every article and have a pretty good success rate.

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.

To all complaining of the repeat post...

[GMontag]

People who use glass computers should not throw flames ;-)

Re:Yet another dubbel post

[BoBaBrain]

Clearly there has been a breakdown in communication between the "beef-jerky-based-computing-to-follow" department and the "good-enough-to-lick" department.

Re:Sharp's Glass Computer

[hype7]

Computing on the cutting edge of technology!

Oh come on, it's just a PR stunt. I'm surprised you didn't see right through it.

-- james

/. logic

[CaptainPhong]

while (1) {
foreach $story (@pending_stories) {
next if is_stupid($story);
next if ms_is_good($story);
next if postgres($story) > mysql($story);
cream_shorts() if content($story) eq 'vapor';
(drool() && next) if content($story) eq 'pr0n';
push @repeat_stories, $story if iq($editor) < 80;
post($story);
}
@pending_stories = (@repeat_stories, get_new_stories(@kuhlest_slashdotters));
}

Acronym?

[n8willis]

The company's name is Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Ltd., and it's unlisted? Why, did they think investors would be put off from purchasing a stock whose ticker symbol was SELL?

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.