World’s First Grey Scale 32 MUX LCD Driver / Controller Chip for Mobile Telecommunication Products

First of Its Kind to Display Grey Scale Graphic in 100 x 32 pixel LCD

Hong Kong, Oct 11, 1999 – Solomon Systech Limited today announced a new, world’s first grey scale 32 mux LCD driver / controller, part number SSD1810, designed to meet the rapidly advancing mobile telecommunication market. The LCD driver / controller chip was designed and developed by the Solomon Systech development team located in Hong Kong, which was formerly a professional team in Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector. This grey scale display function of the chip made itself an outstanding part from a whole, new SSD181X series LCD drivers / controllers. The grey scale display function can enhance existing telecommunication products such as cellular phones, pagers, PHS and other portable equipment.

“Customers’ expectation on a cellular phone is high,” ‘said Humphrey Leung, president of Solomon Systech Limited. “Cellular phone is not just a phone anymore. It is a combination of information storage, data communications, entertainment and fashion. Customers demand latest cellular phone model to provide basic function like phone book, plus other advance features such as financial information update, banking transaction, games and even image download. With grey scale display, data and images can be clearly presented and more varieties of games can be available. Grey scale display also allows fancy greeting message and background pattern setting to personalize your own phone.”

The SSD1810, capable of driving up to either 100 x 32 or 98 x 34 dot matrix monochrome/grey scale STN LCD with an extra icon line, integrates all common / segment driver outputs, voltage generator, internal regulator resistors, serial / parallel interface, selectable temperature compensation circuitry, oscillator in one chip to minimize chip count and external components required in applications. The device is designed to adapt the most commonly used basic command set for easy programming. In addition, advanced design in zero address setup / hold time enables the device to match the timing interface with the latest, fast DSP or MPU protocol directly, a definite need in the next generation mobile telecommunication products system design.
Technical Specifications

The SSD1810 drives 4 lines 16 English characters per line or 2 lines 6 Chinese characters of 16 x 16 font per line plus one icon line. It has 98 segment, 32 common, 2 com/seg outputs and one separate icon driving common. By programming the com/seg outputs, this device allows either full graphic dot matrix display of 100 x 32 pixels or 98 x 34 pixels plus one icon line of 100 or 98 icons.

Operating in low voltage 1.8V to 3.5V, the IC provides an on-chip 2x, 3x or 4x voltage generator for at most – 15V high voltage output. On-chip smart bias divider with internal regulator resistors employs special scheme to minimize operating current to only several tens uA and also minimize external components required.

The device has a half display mode where the LCD can be programmed to display with less number of rows (lower mux ratio). It can further help to reduce LCD power consumption by 30% during standby mode. Another special icon mode provides capability to drive as many as 100 icons at low frequency without additional I/O pins and high LCD drive voltage (VLCD) requirement. The current consumption at icon display is typically 7uA only.

The device provides selection on serial or parallel interface, which includes Motorola standard serial peripheral interface SPI, 8 bit 6800-series parallel interface and 8 bit 8080-series parallel interface. Advanced design in zero address setup / hold time enables the device to handshake with the latest, fast DSP or MPU protocol and no need extra wait state programming effort.

Other features are LCD drive voltage temperature compensation at 4 selectable coefficients, 32 level internal contrast control, vertical scrolling, master clear RAM, page blinking and on-chip oscillator.

The SSD1810 is manufactured in CMOS process, available in bare die (square die design) for COB applications, gold bump die (slim die design) for COG applications and TAB (slim die design). Bare die samples are available now while gold bump die and TAB samples will be available in October 1999 and November 1999 respectively, at sample price US$4.0 for bare die and gold bump die, US$5.0 for TAB.

For detailed information and product specifications, please contact Solomon Systech Limited or visit the web site at http://www.solomon-systech.com.

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