Samsung commercializes 7in LCDs with single chip driver

07 Sep 2006

The novel display eliminates the need to have a separate printed circuit board for timing control and power components. Previously, multi-chip approaches have limited the design of very slim portable electronics.

Samsung Electronics, Seoul, Korea , has this month begun producing 7 in LCDs, with the aim of achieving a leading position in the WVGA display market for mobile devices.

7in LCD

The company unveiled its new high-resolution display at the International Meeting on Information Displays (IMID 2006), held in Daegu, Korea in August.

The 7 in LCD is suitable for high-end multimedia products such as handsets for digital multimedia broadcasting, portable multimedia, DVD players and navigation systems.

"This technology breakthrough enables our customers to develop differentiated portable electronic devices with higher resolution, wide aspect ratio mobile displays. With a single-chip packaging solution, we have integrated most of the display electronics on an amorphous silicon LCD," said Yun Jin-hyuk, Samsung Electronics Executive VP and chief of the Mobile Display Business Team.

Until this development, the market for mobile LCDs with WVGA resolution has been centered around 8 in and 9 in models. Samsung's single-chip solution replaces the up to seven driver ICs common for a 7 in platform. The novel display eliminates the need to have a separate printed circuit board that contains timing control and power components to drive the display. Previously, multi-chip approaches have limited the design of very slim portable electronics.

Samsung has applied its proprietary amorphous silicon gate technology to the development of the new 7 in LCD, enabling the gate driver IC to be fabricated directly on the glass substrate, with the timing controller integrated within the driver IC. An onboard digital chip eliminates the need for mobile developers to design their own circuits. The overall circuit footprint and component count have been reduced to about one third of the size of a conventional seven-inch LCD.

The company plans to expand the 7 in LCD production capacity to 10 million units by 2007, and also expand the product line up to the 5 in class within the first half of next year.

• Samsung Electronics has also announced the development of an "intelligent" mobile display driver IC (DDI), which enables the displays on handheld devices to deliver clearer images in broad daylight.

Previously, mobile DDIs have been designed to drive the LCD panels mounted on mobile devices. Now, Samsung has developed an intelligent version that will reduce display power consumption and improve image quality on mobile displays.

The new DDI device automatically measures the brightness of ambient light and determines the optimal image output. While enhancing the visibility of on-screen images outdoors, this DDI device can reduce the power consumption of the display module by nearly 30% by lowering the backlight brightness in an indoor environment.

The photo-sensor and associated processing scheme in the intelligent mobile DDI divides the detected light into thirty-two levels. The device is designed to select the most appropriate image enhancement algorithm for each of these levels, making the colors more lifelike. This new mobile image enhancement algorithm was jointly developed with Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT).

The enhancement algorithm within the DDI analyzes color data of each pixel and reconfigures it to an optimally recognizable condition by adjusting brightness and saturation for crisper visibility. With the primary colors intensified, the LCD images remain bright even when the display is exposed to direct sunlight.