E Ink Holdings (E Ink) and Himax Technologies (Himax) have jointly unveiled the next-generation color e-paper timing controller, an ASIC T-Con named T2000.
The new T-Con design drives screen updates faster with lower power consumption, supporting a broad spectrum of color e-paper technology platforms for eReaders, digital signage, and other e-paper applications. The T2000's e-note handwriting function eliminates the need for a system-on-chip (SoC), simplifying the development process and significantly enhancing screen refresh speed to provide a smooth writing experience.
"The latest T2000 is optimized for color e-paper, significantly enhancing display performance to deliver a superb user experience. The advancements improve screen transitions and optimize system power consumption while offering a handwriting feature that boosts the operational experience of e-paper products," said J.M. Hung, VP of Business Center at E Ink.
"We are grateful for the unwavering support of our long-term partner, Himax, in supporting E Ink's commitment to advancing color e-paper technology by delivering high-quality ASICs. The synergy created from E Ink's advanced color e-paper and the T2000 maximizes the potential of color e-paper across diverse applications and significantly enhances user interactions," Hung concluded.
The T2000 represents a significant advancement in T-Con technology compared to its predecessor, the T1000, introduced in 2019. The T2000 integrates E Ink's proprietary color imaging algorithm, supporting E Ink's latest full-color e-paper display technologies, including E Ink Kaleido 3, E Ink Gallery 3, and E Ink Spectra 6. In addition to delivering high-quality image colors, the T2000 processes color rendering more than ten times faster than the previous generation.
The jointly-engineered T2000 incorporates E Ink's exclusive handwriting processing unit, enabling seamless handwriting on eNotes without requiring a SoC. This innovation streamlines system development and boosts prompt display responsiveness by leveraging Himax's distinctive pipeline accelerator technology, resulting in a nearly lag-free handwriting experience on e-paper displays.
Enhanced performance and environmental impact
"We are delighted to engage in yet another collaboration with E Ink, drawing on our decades of expertise in image display processing and T-Con design to jointly create a new milestone in the color e-paper field," said Pen-hsin Chen, VP of Image Processing SoC Operation Unit at Himax.
"The chip architecture of T2000 is meticulously designed and customized specifically for E Ink's color e-paper technology, delivering unparalleled performance and power efficiency. This opens up new possibilities for applications in eReaders, digital signage, and more, further demonstrating Himax's commitment to pioneering advancements and offering state-of-the-art display technologies and solutions," Chen concluded.
The T2000 T-Con is crucial for color e-paper displays, generating and managing timing signals to drive the display and controlling the timing and duration of voltages for optimal display performance.
Specifically designed for E Ink's e-paper technologies, the T2000 features temperature compensation, ensuring precise color and image display under different environmental conditions. T2000's supported interfaces include MIPI-DSI, USB 3.0, and SPI, enabling color e-paper devices to efficiently handle content data streams.
Using an embedded hardware-accelerated image codec processing unit, the T2000 converts data streams into mLVDS or TTL signal formats. This capacity allows the T2000 to support e-paper displays with resolutions up to 4K UHD and frame rates up to 150Hz. Additionally, its MIPI interface has been enhanced to achieve a maximum transmission speed of 1Gbps, significantly expanding its application coverage.
The T2000 ASIC employs Himax's tailored low-power chip design structures and utilizes an advanced semiconductor process to create an ultralow energy chip. Additionally, the T2000 integrates a Himax DRAM controller that interfaces with Low Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR) for high-performance and low-power data transmission.
These advantages result in system power consumption of less than 300 mW in active mode and less than two mW in sleep mode, significantly extending the battery life of e-paper products.
According to E Ink's estimation, approximately 130 million e-readers have been used worldwide in the past five years, rapidly shifting consumer behavior from purchasing and reading printed books to digital alternatives. If each e-reader downloads an average of ten books per year, using these devices significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions compared to printed books by a factor of 100,000 and LCD tablets by a factor of 50.
