- TOKYO (Reuters) - Sharp Corp,
Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen
on Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass,
enabling it to function like a computer.
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- The company hopes to have products available by 2005
using the advanced circuitry, perhaps even a "display card" that
could store data and be carried around for use with various gadgets from
games machines to mobile phones to car navigation systems.
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- "This could be something the size of a business
card, perhaps with a wireless function and touch-screen input," Mikio
Katayama, head of Sharp's mobile display division, told reporters after
a news conference. "We still have to work out the specifics."
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- The new screens use Sharp's continuous grain silicon
(CGS) technology, which is already moving into mass production in displays
containing built-in driver circuits.
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- Display drivers, which help turn a screen's pixels on
and off, usually reside in separate microchips.
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- Sharp is betting heavily on CGS technology, which permits
on-screen circuitry that can save space, cut production costs and produce
ultra-fine resolutions for showing maps or photos.
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- A quick advance to next-generation technology has taken
on added urgency for Sharp as South Korean and Taiwanese rivals, often
armed with substantial cost advantages, move aggressively into the LCD
market.
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- A surge in production by Asian competitors has driven
down prices for flat-panel computer screens and severely crimped profits
at Japan's display makers.
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- The screen unveiled on Tuesday is the latest in a series
of advances in CGS that Sharp hopes will keep it ahead not just of its
Asian competitors but of a rival technology, low-temperature polysilicon,
used in LCDs by Japanese peers such as Toshiba Corp and Sanyo Electric
Co.
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- SMART GLASS
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- Sharp's Katayama said CGS, with its greater uniformity
of silicon grains, achieved three times the rate of electron transfer as
low-temperature polysilicon, making it much better suited for on-screen
circuitry.
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- But he cautioned that it would be some time before the
screens were smart enough to replace the PC, while glass poses no serious
threat yet to silicon as the preferred material for everyday semiconductors.
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- The prototype display incorporated a 25-year-old PC processor
and, with 13,000 transistors, was a far cry from the 55 million in one
of Intel Corp's Pentium 4 processors.
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- Sharp executives also said the latest advance had not
compelled them to increase their target of 300 billion yen ($2.40 billion)
in annual revenues from CGS screens by the 2005/06 (April-March) business
year.
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- Shumpei Yamazaki, president of unlisted Semiconductor
Energy Laboratory Ltd, Sharp's partner in the project, compared the challenge
of putting processor circuitry on glass to "building a skyscraper
on rubber".
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- But he said glass offered several advantages over silicon,
including lower temperatures for production, so that faster metal gates
could be used for its transistors.
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- Sharp senior executive vice president Shigeo Misaka said
the companies wanted to keep the technology to themselves as much as possible,
although they may eventually have to license it to a second manufacturer
to reassure customers about stable supplies.
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- The news had little impact on Sharp's share price, which
ended Wednesday trade 3.22 percent lower at 1,053 yen, in line with weakness
across the Japanese electronics sector.
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- The Tokyo Stock Exchange's electrical machinery index
fell 3.67 percent.
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