'Computer-On-Glass' Display

bfries writes "Sharp Corp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), unveiled a screen Tuesday with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. It uses Sharp's continuous grain silicon (CGS) technology and should be used on some products in 2005."

Glass/Silicon

[pubjames]

What is the difference between glass and the silicon crystal used in chips? Aren't they kind of similar?

Heat dissipation

[mortis_aeturnus]

Glass is a very very poor heat conductor. Having anything running at a very low temperature on this would pale any laptop overheating horror stories. This would definately limit the power of the processor you can use. This would make a nice (and slower than 4.77mhz) palm top but nothing more.

Slow Glass

[geoff lane]

When storage density reaches about 60 Gbits/sqin
you can store the all the data for a single pixal for a 90min movie within the area occupied by the pixal.

Once that's possible you can create dedicated movie "books".

Re:Heat dissipation

[TheEnglishPatient]

It depends upon your point of reference. Compared to a metal it may be a poor conductor but in a house the glass is one of the biggest causess of heat loss. Why do you think a winfdow feels cold in winter?

Possible drawbacks...

[GnomeKing]

Now not only can you get your business cards upside down, but you also have trouble telling if the company name really IS japanese, or if your just looking at it from the wrong side

Seriously though - I can really see this sort of technology being used on phone booths (if it can be made cheep enough not to matter if its vandalised now n then) to make them display moving images while still being able to see through the glass to see that theres someone inside

It reminds me of a scene from The Time Machine where the hero blokey was talking to the hologram-type-librarian who was shown walking around "inside" pieces of glass...

Transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm interested in how they get the microprocessor transparent. if you can't use the same space for c and lcd, then there's no reason for this combination

Cool,

[blu3b3rry]

That make some cool windows, HUD for cars, and Computer case. Neat stuff.

Re:Possible drawbacks...

[TheFlyingGoat]

I can really see this sort of technology being used on phone booths

How about the front window in cars? Heads-up-display anyone? I may wait on LASIK in hopes that my glasses in 2008 come HUD enabled. :)

1 GHz limit

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading up on the CGS link, it looks like the technology has a medium-imposed 1 GHz hard upper limit, since it's not really a single silicon crystal, but a set of crystals ("grains" in MatSci speak) in which some effort is made to blur the lines between the grains (hence "continuous"). My guess is some sort of annealing process. The grain boundaries become
a problem at 1 GHz.

Re:Heat dissipation

[Oculus Habent]

They didn't say they were planning on having an Pentium 4 2.8GHz-on-glass - the processing probably won't be very powerful for some time.

Meanwhile wouldn't it be nice to have a half-inch thick high resolution LCD TV?

Brain fart...

[Gruneun]

What if the screen was made up of two pieces of glass, with water being passed between them? Water is obviously a proven way to transfer heat and it would be invisible to the user.

Contacts?

[DSL-Admin]

I would like to see this implented into contact lenses... Then we could have the interface wired to the optic nerve, and voila! instant computer enhanced vision....

Re:Glass is a Liquid...

[klocwerk]

Actually this is a common fallacy.
Glass is a crystalline structure, and does not warp with age.
The old windows which people often point to as being thicker at the bottom, are that way because the glass itself was irregular, and was installed with the heavy part at the bottom as it is more stable that way.
Or so I've been informed by a professional glass-blower who should know such things...

What are these screens going to cost?

[Ruger]

A good Flat Panel already cost more than the computer it's hooked up too. When is someone going to come up with a technology that drives the price of flat panels down? IBM announced this new process [itworld.com] last year, which I understood would be a more cost effective way to make LCDs that the velvet rub. Is anyone using this process yet in manufacturing?

Re:Glass is a Liquid...Maybe..maybe not

[rdean400]

Look here for a discussion...Is glass liquid or solid? [ucr.edu]

The crux is that glass's structure is not clearly solid or clearly liquid. The explanation for the windows that have thicker bottoms than tops is that the old processes for making glass involved blowing a large bubble and then spinning it. The glass had non-uniform thickness, and was typically installed with the heavy end down.

Re:I can see the case mods coming now.

[Wirr]

Fish Tank PC

I could actually think of a real world application for the fish tank PC, although not as a case mod.

I would just love it, if the front glass of my aquarium would be a PC. Then I could just touch it, and it would display the water temperature, the pH, the salinity and so on directly on the front. Boy, would that be cool. No more Gadgets which destroy the look of the aquarium.

Re:Glass is a Liquid...

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass is NOT crystalline. In fact, the DEFINITION of a "Glass" is an amorphous solid, in which the atoms/molecules are in a higgeldy-piggeldy arrangement. Like a liquid, but not moving. Engineers, Physicists and Materials Scientists use "Glass" to mean more than SiO2 Glass - one can make metal glasses "metglasses" by cooling some metal alloys very, very quickly. They have useful mechanical and electromagnetic properties.

You'll most likely encounter a metglass as a golf-club head or maybe as a transformer core.