Nanotech Based Display 217
yodha writes "Ntera showed their NanoChromics Display (NCD) recently. The display uses a nanotechnology process to create a more paper-like image than traditional LCD screen. It delivers significant power savings (they've shoehorned one into an iPod to give people a sense of what it looks like). The image can even remain on the screen for weeks without any power and doesn't need a backlight."
more vaporware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Very Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Power Consumption? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'd like to think I'm not an idiot...but how will that save energy on displays which, for instance, require frequent repaints? Let's say that I'm running my iPod with one of those screens, as they show in the article. The thing has to draw segments of the bar frequently, update the time remaining once per second, draw the entire "Now playing:" row to create the "scroll" effect for long titles, redraw the top if you have a clock running up there, et cetera, et cetera.
Another example would be a touch-sensitive screen. In a drawing tablet, I'd imagine the repaint levels are not going to be particularly low, especially for full-tablet images...
I suppose my question becomes...is it actually less power-hungry than traditional LCDs for its practical uses?
there are a bunch of those... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a good short term solution because switching manufacturing over to those kinds of technologies should be fairly easy.
The disadvantage is that those are still heavy glass sandwidches, with all the problems that brings with it. eInk, OLED, and other new display technologies give far more flexible and lightweight displays, and promise significant weight savings.
nano nano (Score:3, Insightful)
For me, Nanotech is enginering with Atoms; purposely building tiny machine on the Nanometer scale that do things like filter specific atoms to produce "pure" materials, act as a computer or build a rocket engine in a vat of liquid.
Re:Power Consumption? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, for something like an e-book or a clock display the necessary refresh rate/percentage is relatively low - making this system optimal. Also, not having a backlight should save quite a bit of power too (however, I suppose at times a front light will be needed).
Less eye strain! (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not nanotech (Score:1, Insightful)
Start by reading "Engines of Creation" and get back to me when you're not a marketing droid trying to hop on the nanotech bandwagon.
Re:Power Consumption? (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise with a spectrum analyzer view on an mp3 player. It's rather rare for the area between the bars in the analyzer to change. It's also rare that the frame, labels under the bars, scale lines, etc. change.
In an LCD system, all of those pixels need to be refreshed every refresh cycle. In this system once the pixel is set, no energy is used to keep that pixel set at that level.
Looking at my screen right now, easily 95% or more of the screen is not changing from one second to the next. Yet the entire screen is using energy to refresh itself many times a second (50-70 Hz I believe for this screen)
The place where such an interface would be expected to use significantly more energy would be in a Television type interface. Including video games on a PC which you may or may not consider related.
I don't really get your example of a touch-sensitive screen. The areas that would draw energy to be repainted are those where the stylus or mouse pointer are located. Unless you are using some interface that draws lines all over the screen when you move the stylus from one pixel to another close to it, the only pixels that should be affected are those relevant to the brush or tool in question. For a Select this usually means a couple of lines of pixels vertically, and horizontally change. Applying effects, afrects a large portion of the screen, possibly even the entire screen, but it is usually a one shot event.
Even the notorious blink tag in html documents should only cause energy to be expended with the frequency of the blink.
Let's say that it takes 60 times as much energy for a pixel change on one of these screens than on an LCD (equivalent area example, if you get 9 'nano'-pixels in the same space as an lcd pixel, each nano-pixel using ~7 times as much energy as the lcd pixel, you get what 63 times as much energy used for that same area, close enoug to 60 for this example.) If over 90% of the screen is not changing from one refresh cycle to the next, then in 60 refresh cycles after the initial screen was set, you have approximate parity. That's one to two seconds. Obviously savings go up from there.
But that's just some off the cuff calculating and thoughts. I am sure someone out there, perhaps someone who thinks that 1/20th of a dollar is not the same as 5% of a dollar will elucidate my errors.
-Rusty
Re:nano nano (Score:2, Insightful)
That is what got the thought of 'nanotech' into the buzzword realm.
This is not that. Nor is chemestry. Nor is the semi-conductor industry. Or for that matter pretty much any product on the market that uses the nano modifier.
Effectively everything that is on the market that includes something with a nano modifier is materials science where the materials in question happen to be working in the low nanometer range.
This is not to take away from the fact that much of this nano level materials science is actually some pretty impressive stuff. It's just stuff that is using 'nano' as a marketing term to attract attention, rather than nano as an idea of the scale upon which a device or tool is functioning.
Then again, that's just my opinion. Drexler is the person who should be reffered to for better information.
-Rusty
I can see lots of applications (Score:2, Insightful)
A cool device that I would like to see, if this is thin enough, is an ebook device that actually looks like a book with pages, but each of the pages is a sheet of this stuff that contains a different piece of literature, and you could have like a USB hookup where the binding of hte book would normally be for syncing with a computer.
I don't know how thin this stuff is, but it would rock to have a lightweight monitor that you could hang on your wall. I know, LCD's already do that, but this stuff seems way cooler.
A device that you could draw on, and it would look good! And have good battery life! Like a digital drawing board or artists pad.
Cheaper, longer lasting battery life PDA's!
Ditto for cell phones!
And probably a whole bunch of other things!
Odd review (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, maybe they're really keen on the new tech and are trying to skew things its way.
But no, further down they discuss the eBook reader example. "This ebook looked great, and really shows off the power of the digital paper. Alas, I had to keep pressing the contrast button to refresh the image. Perhaps the technology is not as far along as the company suggested."
Huh? Anything you can achieve by pressing a button is easily achievable through software, isn't it? This is just a minor flaw in the implementation of this particular prototype... and says nothing useful about the actual screen.
Anyway, I'm sure more thoughtful reviews will be coming along soon -- this looks like pretty solid and exciting tech to me. It may not be suitable for many screens (i.e., it takes *more* power than a standard LCD if the pixels are all changing frequently... so you wouldn't watch a movie on it), but it'd be perfect for putting little status monitor screens on all kinds of things, plus for the applications they prototyped.
Re:Odd review (Score:3, Insightful)
What I got out of the line you quote was: The need to refresh a static page that is supposed to be able to stay that way *without power* for weeks at a time suggests that the technology is not yet where they are trying to get it. It is not as stable as needed for their claim to be true.
Keeping it constantly refreshed with software to get around this deficiency sort of goes against a major feature touted by the technology, doesn't it? Though maybe I missed your point, if so I appologize.
Re:But will need a front light (Score:4, Insightful)
eBooks that update (Score:2, Insightful)
The best part of this is the image staying without power...
Greetings cards with full motions pr0n videos!!
Shirt ties that gets hacked in meeting and turn into giant trouser snakes.
Oh the fun.
Re:Not quite the market (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I can see lots of applications (Score:3, Insightful)
If you request a USB hookup, that means all the work might as well reside on a small USB stick or "Gumstix" computer in the spine anyway, and the pages are only providing display. So all you really need is one 'sheet,' in a suitably-protective frame, with a comfortable handgrip and scrolling controls.
Remember, the 'book' was just a bodge on the problem of producing and storing long rolls of papyrus; there's not really anything magic to the art of page-turning. However, you do need decent coding and appropriate display tech (perhaps with 'motion-prediction,' to avoid LCD-like smear, but in a general purpose device, that could easily be done in the rendering software) to create output that 'scrolls' smoother than movie credits.
Re:more vaporware? (Score:3, Insightful)
A technology that incorporates discs of *glass*, like tft's, lcd's and this display, can't really be thought of as e-paper.
And though one should be sceptic when reading about "working prototypes", they seem to have actually demonstrated that modified iPod to people.
Most "e-paper" vaporwares has never reached such a working state...
Re:consistency of paper (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, how would I lose my notes if they're all conveniently located on my PC? Where's the fun in that?
Re:more vaporware? (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree the color version would be that much better and add to that a 60fps refresh rate and then you've got yourself a nifty technology. But if they can truly bring into production what they're claiming then this has some pretty decent applications.
Re:That iPod (Score:1, Insightful)
It's about making the best thing possible, just not "good enough".
If you can have both the new, lower-power display, and the bigger battery, why not use both?