Epson's New Color LCD Controller for Mobile Phones

Sure, hard drives, motherboards, monitors, and graphics cards may be the glamour girls of hardware, but they'd all be worthless without the wonders of silicon. That's my rationalization for writing about three chips in one day. Plus, it's Friday, and most companies don't make announcements because they figure you're thinking more about the weekend than technology. As a su=ide note, I'm sad to let you know that we haven't seen any new Karaoke machine announcements this week. Getting to the silicon point, Epson Electronics just told us about the S1D13708B00B embedded memory LCD controller for the embedded and handheld markets. The S1D13708 features a 1.8V operating voltage and a full-featured/low pin-count interface to the microprocessor. Epson says the S1D13708 provides a low power, single chip solution for mobile communications devices and Palm-size PCs. Features include an embedded display buffer, direct support for multiple CPU types, programmable resolutions and color depths, software-initiated power save mode and a 121-pin PFBGA package. The S1D13708 LCD controller should be available in sample quantities this month. Production quantities are slated for November 2001.