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e-Skin Displays shows full-color structural plasmonic reflective display

Posted by – June 17, 2018

e-Skin Displays seeks to recreate structural color similar to nature’s (like the skin of a chameleon) that can adapt and change color and pattern to match its surroundings. This display is thin and flexible, has a rich color gamut, uses ambient light to reflect, is angle dependent and is very low power. The company demonstrated a full-color structural plasmonic display with a breakthrough gray/black state, a rich and bright color gamut, and a very high video rate, enabling opportunities in digital signage, consumer electronics and defense applications.

Filmed at the I-Zone demo and prototype area at SID Display Week, the world’s largest and best exhibition for electronic information display technology.

Display Week’s I-Zone, sponsored by E Ink, is a unique exhibition-within-the-exhibition filled with demos and prototypes from around the world. Every year, dozens of applicants submit their pre-market and emerging products to compete for a free booth where they can share their inventions with buyers, manufacturers, potential partners, industry leaders and thousands of attendees.

Sendai College of Japan shows micro-optical diffused light-control film (DLC)

Posted by – June 17, 2018

Researchers at the Optical Function Device Workshop at the National Institute of Technology, Sendai College, demonstrated unique screens using micro-optical elements for projection displays. The screen is a combination of directional diffused light-control film (DLC) with a micro-structured optical film. The screen directs the environment-scattered light to a direction that is different from that of the screen viewer. One is a directive screen using an array of CCR with diverted and curved surfaces (D-CCR), which reflects and scatters the light toward a certain angle: the viewer’s face. The screen has a gain of 16 and reflects extremely bright images even with small and low-power projections.

Filmed at the I-Zone demo and prototype area at SID Display Week, the world’s largest and best exhibition for electronic information display technology.

Display Week’s I-Zone, sponsored by E Ink, is a unique exhibition-within-the-exhibition filled with demos and prototypes from around the world. Every year, dozens of applicants submit their pre-market and emerging products to compete for a free booth where they can share their inventions with buyers, manufacturers, potential partners, industry leaders and thousands of attendees.

Jetcomm Technologies Showcases New Technology at Display Week 2018

Posted by – June 17, 2018

Start-up Jetcomm Technologies, Ltd. demonstrated its LiPHY web browser app, which can receive Li-Fi visible light communication signals with high speed and accuracy. Using the LiPHY app, users simply point their smartphones at objects or points of interest in the physical world to instantly access the corresponding online contents. This helps uses save time by avoiding online searches or QR code scans while they shop, travel or browse in the real world. Venue operators use LiPHY’s platform for providing user-friendly O2O interaction, augmented reality and indoor positioning.

Filmed at the I-Zone demo and prototype area at SID Display Week, the world’s largest and best exhibition for electronic information display technology.

Best of I-Zone 2018: FLC Display without Color Filter by Hong Kong University

Posted by – June 14, 2018

The Best Prototype at I-Zone 2018 award winner at SID Display Week 2018 is Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. They present a solution to lower the power consumption of LCD by 3x by removing the color filter, their 250ppi active-matrix field-sequential color-display panel based on electrically suppressed helix ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC). FLC’s fast response time of 10 microseconds under low voltage of 6.67V/micron enables field sequential color display operation with a 60-Hz frame rate and 360-Hz FLC driving frequency.

Silvaco design tools for the Display Industry at SID Display Week 2018

Posted by – June 14, 2018

Founded in 1986, Silvaco, Inc. is an electronic design automation (EDA) provider of software tools used for process and device development and for analog/mixed-signal, power IC and memory design. During Display Week 2018, representatives discussed and shared demos of its technology computer-aided design (TCAD) solutions with emphasis on enabling the designing of the next generation of TFT, LCD, LED & OLED products, including flat-panel displays. Their products help analyze behavior of materials, what kind of impacts they have on light emissions, test reliability and signal variation; and provide electrical analysis, among other important metrics.

Filmed at SID Display Week 2018, the world’s largest and best exhibition for electronic information display technology.

Radiant Vision Systems at SID Display Week 2018

Posted by – June 14, 2018

Radiant Vision Systems provides visual test and measurement systems that characterize, and inspect light and color for quality in display design and automated production. Their inspecting processes and tools are used in LCDs, LEDs, microLEDs and OLED for flat panel displays, head-up displays, AR/VR, near to eye display. During Display Week 2018 they demonstrated light and color measurement solutions, new assembly and surface inspection systems, and photometry-based imaging systems and specialized lenses for evaluating the unique characteristics of displays used in flexible devices, automotive integrations, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), and other emerging applications.

Filmed at SID Display Week 2018, the world’s largest and best exhibition for electronic information display technology.

Reflective Electrowetting Display by South China Normal University at SID Display Week 2018 I-Zone

Posted by – June 14, 2018

South China Normal University (SCNU) has been developing reflective displays based on the “electrowetting” effect since 2012. A key point in their technology is the improvement of the aperture of display pixels, which for typical electrowetting displays is approximately 70 percent. SCNU displays include apertures of 85 percent, and if these cells are used in stacked cyan, magenta and yellow cells, the displayed colors are markedly more bright and saturated than in 70 percent aperture cells. As part of this key development, the contrast ratio must be maintained or increased, which is achieved by minimizing the stray light transmitted. Contrast ratios up to 20:1 can be shown.

Filmed at the I-Zone demo and prototype area at SID Display Week, the world’s largest and best exhibition for electronic information display technology.

PlayNitride MicroLED Wins Honorable Mention Award at Display Week 2018 I-Zone

Posted by – June 14, 2018

Taiwan’s PlayNitride, Inc. received an honorable mention for utilizing its PixeLED display technology to build a transparent display with an innovative and unique process to transfer RGB microLEDs onto a pixel.

During Display Week 2018, PlayNitride demonstrated two microLED prototypes. One is a small 0.89″ 64×64 (105 PPI) panel with a brightness of 800 nits. All of the LED chips in this display were transferred in three shots (one shot per color). The pixel size in this display is 0.243 mm.

The second display is a larger panel – 3.12″ 256×256 (116 PPI). Due to the larger number of LEDs (total of 786K LEDs) PlayNitride had to use 24 shots to transfer all three colored chips. The pixel size in this larger display is 0.219 mm.

Filmed at the I-Zone demo and prototype area at SID Display Week, the world’s largest and best exhibition for electronic information display technology.

Quantum Solutions Quantum Dots at Display Week 2018 I-Zone

Posted by – June 14, 2018

Quantum Solutions is a start-up based in Saudi Arabia, focused on nanotechnology, developing and manufacturing Quantum Dots (QDs) for optoelectronic applications: LCD displays, LEDs, solar cells and photo detectors.

At the I-Zone, they demonstrated their high-efficiency green for LCD applications that replaces the current LCD white with quantum dots using a special film, which ensures a wider color gamete. What makes their technology unique is its 15-nanometer emission for quantum dots. According to Quantum Solutions, current market efficiency is high but the emission width is broad at 30-40 nanometers. Quantum Solutions’ product is much narrower at 15 nanometers, which provides a wider color gamete that can produce an exact green to mix with other RGB colors to create more vibrant and accurate color combinations.

Filmed at the I-Zone demo and prototype area at SID Display Week, the world’s largest and best exhibition for electronic information display technology.

TechNexion shows worldwide pre-certified IoT modules at Computex 2018


TechNexion shows off their new products at Computex 2018: pre-certified IoT modules, Android Things development kits, IP69K embedded systems and more. The booth tour starts with Android Things development kit PICO-PI-IMX7 live demo, based on NXP i.MX7 Dual applications processor and ARM Cortex-A7 architecture has been the go-to development kit since the official Android Things launch at Google I/O in May. The company also demonstrates PICO-IMX8M SoM based on NXP i.MX8M processor and Cortex-A53 + M4 architectures that delivers a whooping 4K UltraHD video performance with HDR and pro audio fidelity for multimedia applications. TechNexion is also launching CE, ETSI, FCC, IC, RCM and TELEC pre-certified IoT wireless communication modules and development kits: PIXI-9377 based on Qualcomm QCA9377, PIXI-6174 based on Qualcomm QCA6174 that deliver high transmission rates, low latency and improved range in noisy industrial environments. The company is showcasing a fully waterproof TWP-1010-IMX6 HMI based on NXP i.MX6 ARM Cortex-A9 processor that was specially designed to withstand extreme environments and cleaning with a jet spray. TWP series likewise includes models based on Intel Braswell architecture. TEK5-APL box PC based on Intel Atom x5-E3930, x5-E3940, x7-E3950 and Apollo Lake architecture, enclosed in a fully ruggedized enclosure for use in a vehicle.

GIGABYTE shows Cavium ThunderX2 ARM Server Portfolio

Posted by – June 13, 2018

The R181-T90 is a 1U height dual socket general purpose ThunderX2 rack server with 8 channels RDIMM / ECC UDIMM DDR4 memory, 24 x DIMM slots, 1 x 25GbE SFP28 LAN port, 1 x 10GbE SFP+ LAN port (optional), 12 x 2.5” hot-swap HDD bays, 2 x OCP mezzanine slots (PCIe 3.0 x16), Aspeed AST2500 management controller, and 1+1 1600W 80 PLUS Platinum PSU. The R281-T91 is a 2U height dual socket general purpose ThunderX2 rack server with 8 channels RDIMM / ECC UDIMM DDR4 memory, 24 x DIMM slots, 1 x 25GbE SFP28 LAN port, 1 x 10GbE SFP+ LAN port (optional), 24 x 2.5” hot-swap HDD bays, 8 x PCIe 3.0 expansion slots, Aspeed AST2500 management controller, and 1+1 1600W 80 PLUS Platinum PSU. The R181-T90 and R281-T91 will be available to order from July 2018. The H261-T60 is a 2U height 4 node density optimized ThunderX2 server with dual ThunderX2 CN9975 sockets for each node (8 x sockets in total) and rear access to the node trays. The sockets will support a CPU up to 195W TDP. Each node supports 4 channels RDIMM / ECC UDIMM DDR4 memory, with 64 x DIMM slots for the system in total. The system contains in total 8 x SFP28 10G/25G LAN ports, 4 dedicated management ports, 12 x 3.5” SATA/SAS hot-swap HDD/SSD bays, 8 x low profile PCIe Gen3 expansion slots, 4 x OCP Gen3 mezzanine slots, and the system includes Aspeed AST2500 remote management controller and 1 + 1 2200W 80 PLUS Platinum redundant PSU. The H261-T60 will be available for shipping in late September or early October 2018. Find more information on GIGABYTE’s server products at http://b2b.gigabyte.com

Nanosys Quantum Dots for LCD, OLED and MicroLED

Posted by – June 11, 2018

Jeff Yurek, Nanosys Director of Marketing at SID DisplayWeek 2018 in Los Angeles talks about the Quantum Dots which Nanosys has been developing since its founding in 2001. Jeff walks me through the company’s technology roadmap to explain how Quantum Dots can be used in displays of all types from LCDs to OLEDs to microLEDs and even emissive Quantum Dot displays of the future.

Quantum dots are tiny man-made crystals. They are so small that you can’t see them with a typical microscope. In fact, they’re 10,000 times narrower than a human hair. Quantum dots are actually very powerful devices and it’s their size that gives them a unique ability: to convert light into nearly any color in the visible spectrum with very high efficiency.

Each quantum dot is actually a tiny semiconductor — which means it can convert incoming energy. The electronic characteristics of quantum dots are determined by their size and shape. This means they can control the color of light given off by a quantum dot just by changing its size. Bigger dots emit longer wavelengths like red, while smaller dots emit shorter wavelengths like green. Think of a guitar string. When a guitar string is shortened, it produces a higher pitch and when it is lengthened, it creates a lower pitch. The tune of a quantum dot – the wavelength of the light it emits – behaves in a similar way.

Today, Quantum Dot displays are built just like LED displays. The quantum dots are added to the backlight of the display in the form of a translucent plastic film that’s loaded with dots. Each TV contains literally trillions of Quantum Dots. In this mode, the Quantum Dots are improving existing LED displays by enabling them to be more power efficient and deliver better color.

The film itself is made using a roll-to-roll coating process. Nanosys manufactures Quantum Dots in Silicon Valley, California and partners with companies like Hitachi Chemical to create Quantum Dot films used by display makers.

Unlike OLED materials, Quantum Dots are inorganic. This means they’re really stable and can be handled more easily in manufacturing. That makes for a tougher, longer lasting display that doesn’t exhibit burn-in issues.

According to Nanosys, Quantum Dot technology is not limited to LCDs. It can improve displays of all types from LCDs to OLEDs to microLEDs to pure, emissive QDEL displays.

Nanosys shared a detailed roadmap video at SID that breaks down the display design for each of these new implementations for their future of the Quantum Dot.

Dr. Charlie Hotz, Nanosys Vice President of R&D, Quantum Dots lecture at SID Display Week 2018:

Vuzix Blade Developer Kit AR Smart Glasses about to ship


Paul Travers, President and CEO at Vuzix talks about how Vuzix is about to ship the Vuzix Blade Developer Kit to developers, providing a wearable smart display with a see-through viewing experience utilizing Vuzix’s proprietary waveguide optics and Cobra II display engine, to be able to see overlaid information, indoors or out, such as patient data, mapping directions, restaurant menus, weather information, alerts and more without picking up a smartphone. Vuzix Blade (see my previous videos about the Vuzix Blade here) can also synchronize and interact with a smartphone, allowing users to keep their phone in their pockets for almost everything where fashion meets technology in the wearable display arena. Vuzix also recently announced partnership to use the new Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 Platform and also working with Plessey microLED Microdisplay Technology.

Ron Mertens, CEO at OLED-Info

Posted by – June 11, 2018

A video interview with Ron Mertens, CEO at OLED-Info, a knowledge hub launched in 2004 to focus on OLED technologies. Ron discusses his work at OLEDs, his views on the display market and various emerging technologies, and the DisplayWeek event, the largest gathering of display professionals. See more at https://www.oled-info.com

OLED-info talks Visionox PMOLED vs AMOLED

Posted by – June 11, 2018

At SID DisplayWeek 2018, China-based OLED maker Visionox demonstrated a wide range of AMOLED and PMOLED solutions. This video focuses on Visionox’s Passive-Matrix OLEDs (PMOLEDs), which are relatively simple displays used in a wide arrange of devices – wearables, industrial, commercial and others. Joining us in this video is Ron Mertens, the OLED expert behind http://OLED-Info.com, a knowledge hub that focuses on the OLED market and industry. Ron explains the difference between PMOLEDs and AMOLEDs, the use cases of PMOLEDs and walks us through Visionox’s PMOLED devices on display. See more at https://www.oled-info.com/pmoled

​Ross Young, Founder and CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), DisplaySearch

Posted by – June 10, 2018

Ross Young is the Founder and CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC). Prior to DSCC, Ross was SVP of Displays, LEDs, Lighting and PV at IMS Research after the firm acquired his market research business Young Market Research (YMR). Prior to YMR, Ross was VP of New Market Creation at Samsung LCD where he reported to the CEO.

From 1996 – 2008, Young started, ran and sold DisplaySearch, the leading source of market intelligence, events and consulting to the flat panel display supply chain. At DisplaySearch, Young launched most of the categories for the company including FPD equipment, FPD materials, TFT LCD shipments and technology, notebook PCs, desktop monitors, TVs, sell-through and more. Ross pioneered coverage in each layer of the display supply chain and was the only analyst to cover the entire display supply chain at DisplaySearch. He also launched their US events business, which included the broadcasting of their HDTV Conference on HDNet. In addition, he led DisplaySearch’s global consulting business. With less than $500 in capital, he grew the company to over $10M in revenues during his tenure. Young sold DisplaySearch to The NPD Group in 2005 matching DisplaySearch’s sell-in business with NPD’s sell through and consumer data providing new insights to customers. While at NPD, Young received their prestigious John Byington Award for outstanding creativity and innovation. Young also received a Presidential Citation Award from the Society for Information Display (SID) in 2012 “for his sustained service in promoting the Market Focus Conference Series from concept to successful completion”.

​Prior to DisplaySearch, Young served in senior marketing positions at OWL Displays, Brooks Automation, Fusion Semiconductor and GCA in the driver IC, flat panel automation, etch and strip and lithography markets. In his first job at GCA, Young was named to the VLSI Research Executive All Star team in his attempts to help save the company, which had received extensive support from SEMATECH. Ross graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a degree in Economics and completed their Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies where he conducted extensive research on the relationships between semiconductor manufacturers and semiconductor equipment suppliers which led to the publication of his book – Silicon Sumo: US-Japan Competition and Industrial Policy in the Semincoductor Equipment Industry published by the University of Texas.

QNAP TS-328, affordable 3-bay RAID5 NAS

Posted by – June 8, 2018

QNAP TS-328 ($249 at Amazon.com) is the World’s first maybe most cost-effective 3-bay NAS with dual Gigabit LAN that can be used to do a RAID 5 array with the fewest disks for the lowest cost RAID 5 NAS system, powered by Realtek RTD1296 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, with multimedia support such as H.264/H.265 hardware decoding and transcoding, cross-device file backup, synchronization, storage, backup, file management, sharing and more using the Linux based QNAP QTS 4.3.4 operating system with all sorts of apps that can be used on a NAS you can read more about QTS here Read more about QNAP TS-328 here.

JDI shows 17.3″ 8K Light Field holographic LCD, 13.3″ 4K industrial, curved LCD, 1001ppi VR and more

Posted by – June 6, 2018

Japan Display Inc (JDI) is an LCD technology joint venture by Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi since 2012. In this video they are showing their in-cell pixelize technology in a 16,7″ automotive display with no eternal touch panel, local dimming back light, high contrast, curved conformed styles, 4x 12.3″ bonded curved displays from pillar to pillar in the car, JDI has the top share of the automotive display market. JDI shows their industrial line of display products with long life support of 7, 10, 12 years of support, mostly built very rugged in their design, some outdoor viewable, zero bright dot deffect, touch screens, 6.4″ XGA 1024×768 suitable for avionics, 7″ 1280×720 700nits suitable for example for broadcast applications, 13.3″ 4K with a small bezel in an industrial package. JDI also shows some of their future tech demos such as a 80% transparent display without a color filter or polarizer using sequential RGD LED lighting, 17.3″ light field holographic 8K display allowing for an amazing holographic like effect for specially created holographic stills and even video where it appears that you are moving around the person in the video with wider viewing angles than other Light Field displays shown previously. JDI shows their 17,3″ 8K display used for 8K broadcasting, they also have a new version of this 17.3″ 8K display with BT2020 enhanced color support using red, green and blue lasers for backlighting. JDI does 11.45″ E Ink shelf labels with some bright saturated red or yellow available. Ultra narrow bezel IPS-Nano LTPS LCD displays with wide viewing angles where the color uniformity is the same at any viewing angle for the medical market. JDI is the largest color LTPS LCD smartphone display provider. LTPS allows for the high pixel density. Full Active bezel-less LCD display like the 5.99″ 18:9 with narrow borders on all 4 sides used in the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2. Full active LCD with straight corners as used in the HTC U11+. JDI shows 15Hz to 60Hz variable refresh rate showing that even running UI animations at 15Hz there wouldn’t be any image degradation which could save significant amount of power. JDI also works on Flexible OLED.

Qualcomm Press Conference at Computex 2018

Posted by – June 6, 2018

Qualcomm launches the Snapdragon 850 for Windows 10, with representatives of Microsoft and Samsung participating in the keynote too. You can see my extensive video interview about Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 for Windows 10 Laptops here.

Nvidia Press Conference at Computex 2018


Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of Nvidia, Announces Jetson Xavier which I have filmed a separate interview about here, he does not launch the rumored GTX2080 or GTX1180 next-gen graphics cards yet, provides update on Max-Q thinner full GPU gaming laptops, talks DGX-2 supercomputer “The World’s Largest GPU” (an update on the DGX which I filmed here) with 2 petaflops of performance in one node, 512GB frame buffer which has set 5 world records: fastest single chip, fastest single node, fastest at scale, fastest inference, and highest inference throughput.