Display technology promises lower-cost LCDs

Jan. 17, 2002
JANUARY 17-- The PenTile Matrix (PenTile Matrix Licensing; Vallejo, CA) is a new display technology that promises to double the addressable resolution in each axis, while providing antialiasing of displayed images.

JANUARY 17-- The PenTile Matrix (PenTile Matrix Licensing; Vallejo, CA) is a new display technology that promises to double the addressable resolution in each axis, while providing antialiasing of displayed images. Already licensed by MicroDisplay Corp. (San Pablo, CA), the technology uses a checkerboard pattern of alternating red and green pixels while reducing the blue information by half compared to the red and green pixels.

To attain its high resolution, the new matrix-display technology uses the company's ClairVoyante subpixel rendering algorithm. During operation, each logical pixel assigns a weighted mapping of the conventional software logical pixel's three color values (R, G, and B), with the color subpixels on the display. To display a single bright white dot centered on the green subpixel, for example, the green subpixel is set to 50%, the four surrounding red subpixels are set to 12.5%, and the blue subpixel is set to 25%. Consequently, the energy of the original white dot is spread over these subpixels in a Gaussian spot, much like that displayed by a CRT.

Whereas logical pixels are displayed next to each other, the values of the overlapping logical subpixels are added together. Therefore, if a given area of the display is white, the values for all of the subpixels add up to 100%. The value of any given subpixel is then half of the input value of the original software logical pixel at that location with the remaining energy coming from the surrounding four software logical pixels.

For more on this story, see Vision Systems Design, January 2002.

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