DISPLAY CONTROLLER SYSTEM

• US 20110063314A1
• Filed: 09/14/2010
• Published: 03/17/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: SiPix Imaging, Inc. (E Ink Holdings Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: SiPix Imaging, Inc. (E Ink Holdings Incorporated)
• Inventors: Lin, Craig, Chiu, Wen-Pin
• Application Number:
  US12/882,094
• Publication Number:
  US 20110063314A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/531
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 3/344 based on particles moving in a fluid or in a gas, e.g. electrophoretic devices electrophoretic devices per se G02F1/167
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 5/399 using two or more bit-mapped memories, the operations of which are switched in time, e.g. ping-pong buffers

Abstract

A display controller system with a memory controller and buffers is described. The system enables transferring data from the main memory of the CPU to the image memory without interfering the image updating. As a result, the present invention may allow continuously updating the display image and continuously writing new image data from CPU to the image memory which improves overall system performance.

Claims

1. A display controller system for transferring image data to a display, comprising a memory controller, a first buffer, and a second buffer, wherein said memory controller transfers data from the first buffer or the second buffer which is full to an image memory.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said memory controller determines if image data from a CPU memory is transferred to the first buffer or the second buffer.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the first buffer and second buffer operate as ping-pong buffers.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein said display controller further comprises a display controller CPU and a look-up table.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein said image memory has at least three spaces.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the size of the buffer is smaller than the size of data of a single image.

7. A method of transferring data for a display device, which method comprises:

(A) (i) accessing current and next image data from an image memory and comparing the two images,

(ii) finding the appropriate driving waveforms, one for each of the pixels in a given line, from a lookup table,

(iii) forwarding to a display voltage data to be applied to each of the pixels in said given line; and

(B) (i) transferring image data from a buffer which is full to the image memory, wherein both steps A and B are completed within a line updating time period.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein during multiple line updating time periods, Steps A and B repeat and are carried out in an interleaving manner.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein in a line updating time period, Step B is skipped.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein said display is an electrophoretic display.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein said line updating time period is calculated from a frame time divided by the number of lines of pixels.

12. The method of claim 7, wherein the buffer operates as a ping-pong buffer.

13. The method of claim 7, wherein said image memory has at least three spaces.

14. A display system comprising:

an electrophoretic display;

a display controller comprising a memory controller and two buffers; and

an image memory.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the two buffers operate as ping-pong buffers.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein said image memory has at least three spaces.