Sharp Drops LCD (into Silicon)
In the mid-1990s, Sharp Corp. began developing a substrate with which it could house its electronic circuitry and flat panel LCD displays, thus eliminating the layers of circuitry and materials that bond displays and computers in anything from a PDA to a web pad. The Holy Grail: a sheet computer as thin as a credit card that could cover a wall or fit inside a wallet. After years of searching for the right material, Sharp found continuous grain silicon (CG silicon) glass.
After developing a prototype device last fall that had an 8 bit processor with 13,000 transistors and a liquid-crystal display onto a CG silicon substrate, Sharp says it will begin mass producing a 5 MHz CPU device in Japan that will offer PDA functions this year.
The company has also applied the CG silicon to create the Zaurus SL-C700, a PDA with a 640x480-pixel resolution that was demonstrated at LinuxWorld. The company launched the Linux-based device in Japan this month and will sell the device in the U.S. by the end of the year.
While the higher conductivity rate of the CG silicon material allows for a better resolution than most competing PDAs and handheld computers, the electronic circuitry was not incorporated into the CG silicon substrate, and thus, the PDA does not offer much improvement in its form factor. Compared to most commercialized PDAs today, the device's weight of eight ounces and its lxwxd dimensions of 4.7" x 3.3" x 0.7" are excellent, but not revolutionary.
The device also offers some interesting features to match its 640x480 16 bit display: a 3.7" display that rotates and closes; a Qwerty keyboard; and 64MB of ROM and 32MB of RAM. The ROM stores most of the data so you do not lose anything if the battery falls out or goes dead for an extended period of time, which has been a real pitfall with the PalmPilot. The SL-C700 also supports MultiMediaCard (MMC), Secure Digital (SD), and Type II CompactFlash (CF). Pricing is estimated between $600 and $700.
