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“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, they say. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And the writer of this article was given an unexpected reminder of how true this can seem when he recently moved house and discovered in his loft a 1982 PC with a 1MHz processor and a 5Mbyte external hard disk unit that had cost more than the computer.  Like all the best aphorisms, these words can appear to be either indisputably true or equally false, depending on your perspective. This article was written on a PC with a 1GHz processor and a 50Gbyte hard disk, so in less than twenty years the processor speed has increased a thousandfold and the hard disk capacity has increased by a factor of a ten thousand. But the machines still have much in common - they are still metal boxes with sockets at the back for attaching a mouse, a keyboard and a monitor, although the monitor is now most likely to be a 17” one that takes up even more desk space. Hands and eyes are likely to remain the principal means of human interaction with computers for many more years, so keyboards and displays seem to have a secure future. This doesn’t mean that they are not changing, especially in the display area, where LCD panels are fast recapturing desk space. Led by Japan, where penetration is close to 50%, the LCD monitor market grew 37% in 2000 to exceed six million units. There is no doubt that as prices continue to fall more and more of us will change from CRT monitors to LCD panels. Around two years ago, ST studied the LCD market and concluded that the most impressive silicon technology was that which had been developed by Arithmos, a young, specialized semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California. ST bought the company and Arithmos has now been integrated into ST’s Imaging and Displays Division, which is headquartered in Grenoble, France, and also has major R&D activities in California, Scotland, India, China and Singapore. Feature-Full at 0.18µm The Arithmos analog and digital design skills and the hardware and software architecture expertise has flourished in the new environment, as evidenced by six new Display Engine ICs that ST has just introduced. Aimed at rapidly growing, cost-sensitive markets for desktop LCD monitors and smart panels, LCD projectors, plasma and rear-projection televisions, the ADE3xxx family is produced in 0.18 µm, enabling the devices to deliver unmatched features to LCD system designers and meet their cost targets. The ADE3xxx line-up covers a wide range of applications from cost-sensitive analog-only and digital-only XGA displays up to high-end dual-interface SXGA designs with TV video input. The devices support input resolutions up to UXGA (1600x1200) and output resolutions up to SXGA (1280x1024). All of the devices incorporate a proven, third-generation triple 9-bit ADC with ultra low jitter line lock PLL. The combination of the ADC and ST’s superior IQSync auto calibration circuitry provides the industry’s fastest and most accurate Auto-Setup adjustment, minimizing user intervention. All products also include a Digital YUV video input option. Perfect Pictures, Perfect color A key feature of the ADE3xxx family is ST’s Perfect Picture™ technology with content dependent processing for optimal display quality. Perfect Picture automatically detects the presence of inherently dark video and picture windows and independently controls brightness, contrast, and gamma to optimize the image without affecting the background Windows desktop settings. Additionally, Perfect Picture intelligently recognizes application content and applies sharpening filters to text-based applications and smoothing filters to graphic-based applications. Up to seven different windows can be detected at one time and independently optimized. Another advanced feature is the Enhanced Perfect Color™ technology. This includes ST’s superior temporal and spatial dithering technology and now addresses the emerging sRGB color space standard. This proprietary color-calibration technology makes it possible to ‘warp’ individual colors three-dimensionally providing precise color representation across many different LCD panels and other color input/output devices. Other important features include a fully programmable 30bit gamma table (non-interpolated), a highly programmable bitmapped or character based on-screen display (OSD) engine and ST’s Safety Mode(tm) feature that prevents blank screens by always delivering a readable, full-color image even when input rates are outside the boundaries of the panel’s specification. This feature is enabled on all products and is achieved without the aid of an expensive external frame buffer. To accommodate emerging IQPanel™ (smart panel) design concepts, the ADE 3200 (XGA) and the ADE 3250 (SXGA) Display Engine ICs integrate a fully programmable LCD timing controller with LVCMOS- and RSDS-compatible outputs. This feature reduces material costs and greatly simplifies monitor design. Coupled with the integrated T-CON is an integrated pattern generator, for fast, convenient, cost-effective final testing of smart panels. Addressing EMI reduction for smart panel applications, the ADE 3200 and 3250 incorporate Spread Spectrum, Data Inversion, Active Slew Rate Control, and Per Pin Delay techniques to ensure EMI certification. ST supports the ADE3xxx Display Engine ICs with a powerful, user-friendly development software package, the ART Software Utility Suite. It enables quick and easy software customization to reduce development costs and speed designs to market.  |
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