New Display Technology to Compete with LCDs?

NetRanger writes "C|Net's News.com has a really interesting article to a new display technology that is based on interference of light patterns. The company, Iridigm, has a very compelling case for why their display method is far superior to LCD, including far brighter displays, far less power consumption... but the cool this is that the display actually works like RAM (it retains its state until voltage is applied to reset it) -- so what do you see when the driver crashes?"

Comments

Bad for gaming?

[Allaria]

Quote the article:

In theory, one of the key features of iMoD displays will be their ability to hold an image without consuming much power, because of pixel memory.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but wouldn't that mean that high framerates would cause the voltage to skyrocket?
It seems like it would *look* beautiful, but would be costly to operate.

Of course, if you're going to shell out the cash for this, then you're probably not going to be worried about the electric bill.

Still sticking to my CRT for now...

Re:Bad for gaming?

[cybrangl]

I think this will make the concept of framerat obsolete. Framerate occurs when the screen is updated. Because normal screens need to refresh the entire screen on a regular basis, the act like flipbooks (image changes slightly on each page). With this technology you don't need a framerate because you almost never change everything on the screen at once. I would assume it would draw more power since games typically change much more of the screen than office programs, but even so, you are still only updating what changes (at least I hope that is how these will work).

Re:Bad for gaming?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

With this technology you don't need a framerate because you almost never change everything on the screen at once.

You do in most FPS games- modern games have a lot of grayscale and textures, dynamic lighting etc. Therefore if you turn even a tiny bit, practically every pixel needs to change, or potentially can do anyway.

not quite

[mlong]

I don't quite think the poster understood the article. From the article:

Once a voltage has been applied to an iMoD element, it requires less power to hold the metallic layer in place than it does to move it.

Looks to me that *some* power is still required to keep the display going. If it loses power the layers would go back to their default state (which while the article does not state, it would appear its white when its off).

Likewise this statement:

but the cool this is that the display actually works like RAM (it retains its state until voltage is applied to reset it)

I'm no RAM expert but from my understanding (with current RAM), as soon as power is lost, so is the data. Unless you're talking about old magnetic RAM from the 50's and 60's, or IBM's upcoming MRAM, but I seriously doubt you were thinking of those.

Forget about laptops ...

[CmdrTypo]

their primary focus is "mobile phones, Smart Phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), two-way pagers, game players, and other mobile appliances". It could be that these displays are impractical for some reason (perhaps fabrication) in larger sizes. As usual with technology like this, the real issue is scaling production.

Re:Bad for games

[dubious9]

The distance we are talking here is nanometers. How long does it take to move something that far?

Besides your logic is flawed. What happens if you put the rest state in the middle of the spectrum, say green? Then it has to move an equal distance to get to blue or red.

However if you go from red to blue or blue to red, this would be the transition with the greatest delay. But again we are talking nanometers, how great can the delay be?

Temperature Insensitivity?

[theduck]

They claim that since the entire display is inorganic, it's insensitive to temperature variations. Looks like the marketing folks have gone a bit too far on this one. Metal and glass have very different coefficients of thermal expansion. That suggests that the metal layer will be under tension at cold temperatures and under compression at high temperatures. This should affect the interference layer thickness achieved at a particular voltage. I expect that this will, at the very least, affect the display colors since interference wavelength is very sensitive to the thickness of the interference layer.

Anyone care to do the math?

Re:Bad for games

[blakestah]

The distance moved is going to be on the order of the wavelength of light - 100 nanometers or so. In fact, this slide pretty much says so - less than a micron.

But what does that say about time ? I don't think there is a real concern. As long as one of these babies can flip in less than 10 milliseconds (and it surely can), there will be no issue wrt speed. In fact, it can very likely be a LOT LOT faster than a CRT, because you merely need to change voltages on transistors, whereas a CRT has a scanning beam that has to traverse the whole screen.

The other thing I found REALLY interesting is that such a display could be run native in a HSB (hue-saturation-brightness) mode. Instead of three colors, each pixel could be ANY hue, since you only have to change a voltage to a new value to change the color. Way cool (they are planning initially for full RGB compat). But in the future it could be a new sort of color scheme entirely.

Of course, it's all vaporware until there are production models.

Uh, no...

[autopr0n]

the eye strain isn't caused by interference with 60hz the power circuits. Modern monitors have a lot of protection from things like that.

The problem is that you can see the image blinking on and off, and it's annoying. I can still see flicker at 70hz, and in general prefer something in the 80s.

Re:LEP's

[breadbot]

If it's emitting light (LEP), I'll betcha it's consuming some energy :).

Iridigm's displays, on the other hand, are reflective -- that is, not emitting (or generating) their own light. That's why they can claim zero power for a static display.

pretty cool for a framed picture of grandkids that gets updated once a week, I'd say!