DISPLAY CONTROLLER SYSTEM

• US 20160267849A1
• Filed: 05/26/2016
• Published: 09/15/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: E Ink Holdings Incorporated
• Original Assignee: E Ink California, LLC (E Ink Corporation)
• Inventors: Chiu, Wen-Pin, Lin, Craig
• Granted Patent: US 10,115,354 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/60 Memory management
• CPC Class Codes: G09G 2340/16 Determination of a pixel data signal depending on the signal applied in the previous frame
• 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 with the image updating. As a result, the present invention may allow continuously updating the image display and continuously writing new image data from CPU to the image memory, which improves overall system performance.

Claims

1. A method of transferring image data for a display device assembly comprising:

a CPU memory;

a display controller comprising two buffers, a memory controller and a look-up table;

an image memory; and

a display device,

wherein new image data are transmitted from the CPU memory to the buffers as determined by the memory controller,

the method comprising;

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

(ii) finding from a lookup table the appropriate driving waveforms, one for each of the pixels in a given line, needed to convert the current image to the next image

(iii) forwarding to the display device voltage data of the appropriate driving waveforms to be applied to each of the pixels in the given line;

(B) if one of the two buffers is full, during an idle time after voltages for a line of pixels have been sent to the display but before waveforms of a next line of pixels are processed, transferring image data from one full buffer to the image memory and simultaneously transferring image data from the CPU memory to the other of the two buffers,

both steps A and B (if effected) being completed within a line updating time period, and

(C) repeating steps A and B (if effected) in an alternating manner.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein step C is carried out in more than one frame period.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein step C is carried out in more than one waveform driving period.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said display device is an electrophoretic display.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said line updating time period is equal to the frame period divided by the number of lines of pixels in the display device.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the two buffers operate as ping-pong buffers.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said image memory has at least three spaces each capable of storing one image to be displayed.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the size of each buffers from is about 0.001% to about 10% of the size of the data representing a single image to be displayed by the display device.