Tech Shout!

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd announced that it had started the production of its 7-inch LCDs, thereby taking the lead in the WVGA display market for mobile devices.

According to Samsung, its seven-inch LCD is perfect for high-end multimedia goods such as handsets for digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB), portable multimedia players (PMPs), portable DVD players, and portable navigation systems.

Samsung’s single-chip solution replaces the four-to-seven driver ICs common for a seven-inch platform. By applying enhanced integration techniques, the company’s new mobile display eliminates the need to have a separate printed circuit board that contains timing control and power components to drive the display. Earlier, multi-chip approaches have limited the design of very slim portable electronics.

Samsung has used its proprietary amorphous silicon gate technology to the development of the new seven-inch LCD, allowing 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.

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

The overall circuit footprint and component count have been cut down to around 1/3 of a conventional seven-inch LCD, inviting widespread adoption of the new seven-inch LCD in slimmer, more efficient system designs.

The company launched the new high-resolution seven-inch display at the International Meeting on Information Displays (IMID 2006), held in Daegu, Korea last month.

Samsung said it plans to expand the 7-inch LCD production capacity to 10 million units by 2007, and also expand the product line up to the five-inch class within the first half of next year.