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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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
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.
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.
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
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 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 ($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 hereRead more about QNAP TS-328 here.
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.
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.
The ThunderX2 family includes over 40 different SKUs for both scale up and scale out applications, ranging from top bin 32 core 2.5GHz parts to 16-core 1.6GHz parts, mapping directly across Intel’s Xeon Skylake server CPUs from highest end Platinum to low end SKUs. With list prices for volume SKUs (32 core 2.2GHz and below) ranging from $1795 to $800, the ThunderX2 family offers 2-4X better performance per dollar compared to Xeon Skylake family of processors. The ThunderX2 family is fully compliant with Armv8-A architecture specifications as well as the Arm Server Base System Architecture and Arm Server Base Boot Requirements standards. The ThunderX2 SoC family is supported by a comprehensive software ecosystem, ranging from platform level systems management and firmware to commercial Operating Systems, Development Environments and Applications. Cavium has actively engaged in server industry standards groups such as UEFI and delivered numerous reference platforms to a broad array of community and corporate partners. Cavium has also demonstrated its leadership role in the Open Source software community driving upstream kernel enablement and toolchain optimization, actively contributing to Linaro’s Enterprise and Networking Groups, investing in key Linux Foundation projects such as DPDK, OpenHPC, OPNFV and Xen and sponsoring the FreeBSD Foundation’s Armv8 server implementation.
35% performance upgrade compared with Snapdragon 835 Windows 10 Laptops such as the Asus Novago which I filmed here features Qualcomm Kyro 385 which is their customized Octa-core quad ARM Cortex-A75 and quad ARM Cortex-A55, going up to 2.95GHz with less throttling. Samsung announces that they will be making Windows 10 on Snapdragon 850 device. Other manufacturing partners Asus, HP and Lenovo are also going to release new devices featuring this chipset. The Snapdragon 850 features 1.2Gbit/s LTE using the X20 modem on SoC (20% faster than 835), fast Wi-Fi, 3x faster AI performance than 835, up to 25 hours of continuous usage. Qualcomm Aqstic enables virtual surround sound, native DSD support, aptX HD as well as 4K capture (possibly up to 4K video-conferencing possible). Microsoft has published this session video from their recent Build conference explaining how developers can compile, build and optimize ARMv8 versions of any Windows app, on stage they showed how to compile the Windows VLC app for the ARM64 Windows 10 platform. Working with Gemalto, Qualcomm demonstrates Integrated SIM (iSIM) on their Snapdragon 850 trusted secure hardware element, to be able to select, load Telecom packages full securely, perhaps eventually also load and store any SIM card into the device and switch between each one.
Libre Computer introduces three products of their CC-series which are form-factor compatible with the Raspberry Pi boards and based on open-market hardware. Depending on the model, these single-board computers (SBCs) offer higher performance, more RAM, and/or more IO while sharing the existing aftermarket parts ecosystem. All three products were featured on crowdfunding and supported by free and open source software (FOSS) like Linux and u-boot.
AML-S905X-CC, nicknamed Le Potato, is based on the popular Amlogic S905X SoC. It offers up to 2GB of RAM, four 64-bit cores, 4K60 video playback with HDR, and built-in infrared receiver. This board is the most power-efficient platform of the three and uses less than one watt at idle. There is a large suite of available software for the S905X SoC and it is the only one that has previously passed certification for Google’s Android TV platform. Currently, video decode is missing from upstream Linux and is only available from Amlogic’s BSP with Linux 4.9. Android up to 8 Oreo is available with design contract.
ROC-RK3328-CC, nicknamed Renegade, is based on the Rockchip RK3328 SoC. It offers up to 4GB of high-speed DDR4, four 64-bit cores, 4K60 video playback with HDR, USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet. Perfect for IO intensive application like home media center, NAS, microservice virtualization, and more. HDMI support in upstream Linux is scheduled to be completed in Q4 2018. Ubuntu and Debian with accelerated video and 3D is available based on Rockchip’s BSP with Linux 4.4. Android up to 8 Oreo is schedule to be available in Q3 2018 with design contract.
ALL-H3-CC, nicknamed Tritium, is based on three separate Allwinner SoCs: H2+, H3, and H5. The H2+ variant offers 512MB of RAM, four 32-bit cores, and 1080P video playback. The H3 variant is the H2+ variant with 1GB of RAM and 4K30 video playback. The H5 variant offers 2GB of RAM, four 64-bit cores, and 4K30 video playback. There is a large software community behind Allwinner SoCs called linux-sunxi and they have been upstreaming Linux hardware support for almost a decade. This platform also has a crowdfunded effort for video decode Linux upstream underway by Bootlin. Android up to 7 Nougat is available.
Libre Computer platforms are radio-less, FCC and CE certified, long-term-supported (LTS 5Y+) single-board computers. Libre Computer offers hardware customization on all supported SoC platforms. Standard boards with components added/removed can be ordered with 1K MOQ. Small effort customization/mezzanine design contract can be requested with 5K MOQ. Full custom design contracts are available for orders with 20K MOQ. Industrial design, software, project management resources are available as part of design contract.
Here’s my full video in 4K from my front row seat of the ARM Press Conference at Computex 2018. You can also watch my Interview with Nandan Nayampally here.
