From the earliest days of semiconductor technology, Texas Instruments (TI) has been working to put practical semiconductor technology into the hands of everyday people, steadily revolutionizing our relationship to technology in the process. Standing proudly on the crest of innovation as they presented the first handheld calculator in 1967, TI has earned its place in the semiconductor pantheon more times than just about anyone in the field. Surely, anyone who has ever been taught mathematics in a public setting since 1970 has been intimately engaged with one or another of the company’s pioneering devices. By the time I was learning the ropes myself, thirty years after TI’s first big public introduction, the company had opened up the doors of not only higher theoretical mathematics and basic programming to every student, but central concepts like cellular communication and digital projection to everyday life.
So, naturally, it’s not hard to believe that in its time Texas Instruments has come to play an essential supporting role in an astoundingly wide variety of common semiconductor-based devices. One of the more surprising applications that TI is most active and essential, and in which most people may generally take their work relatively for granted, is in the multifaceted world of digital projection technology. Starting its development in the late 1970s and perfected by award-winning engineer Larry Hornbeck in 1987, the company’s game-changing, industry-defining DLP optical MEMS technology. DLP technology utilizes what are known as micromirrors in the form of digital micromirror devices, or DMDs, which finally hit the industry in the form of TI’s first commercial DLP chip back in 1996. Since then, there’s been no looking back as TI’s DLP chips have been lauded again and again in more uses than we can reasonably count, and are probably most familiar to the public as the driving force behind almost all modern cinema projection, including IMAX.
So, what could possibly be on the horizon for a company that’s got every reason to feel comfortable sitting pretty at the top of the industry? Thankfully, Jeff Dickhart, TI’s Product Line Manager for the DLP Automotive Business, was on hand recently to talk to us a little more about how TI is proud to still be making strides in transforming everyday optical semiconductor applications in new, cutting-edge projection technology. Before we were done talking, it seemed that I was a little closer to living in a world that previously only existed in the pages of science fiction stories.
Generally speaking, the basis of DLP technology is a pretty astounding thing on its own. These incredible devices are comprised of hundreds of thousands of tiny mirrors that work in concert, turning themselves ‘on and off’ in specific combination to reflect a basic palette of colors from a variety of light sources, including “everything from traditional color wheels to LEDs to lasers,” Dickhart explained. He went on to explain the basics, and even then I was pretty amazed: the interaction of the mirrors and their resulting ability to minutely combine and modulate the wavelengths of a basic color palette creates a huge spectrum of colors which is then projected as pixels in the configuration of the desired image. Altogether, this amazing interaction produces what Dickhart described as “a naturally superior, accurate color representation across a wider range of wavelengths in comparison to analog and other digital projection chips.”
As I often find with modern semiconductor technology in general, this is the kind of occasion when—as I like to say when I relate my sense of wonder to people—modern technology can get a little ‘psychedelic.’ Still, it was just the tip of the iceberg as far as the exciting details that Dickhart related to us in regard to TI’s efforts to engage their newest DLP technology in, of all places, the windshields of our cars.
For most people who don’t fly jets for a living, the idea of what is known as a digital ‘head-up display,’ or HUD, is probably not a very familiar one. Gamers will recognize the idea as something common in first-person-style games; a projection of relevant information on a transparent surface that allows people who are visually engaged to observe information without looking away from their necessary subjects. The technology originally developed to help jet pilots keep their eyes forward, and is now being featured in most commercial planes and even already in some new car models. All things considered, it’s pretty exciting to think that companies like Texas Instruments are working so hard to make things that still seem so downright futuristic come to life in the everyday world.
“The specific DMD that we’ve released into the automotive market first is a .3-inch diagonal array, containing 400,000 mirrors working at an extremely low power,” Mr. Dickhart detailed. And, as can be expected, there are still some major strides still yet to be made in the early stages of the technology’s implementation. “What we’re enabling right now is the ability to take the usual six-degree-wide display and turn it into a 10-or-more-degree-wide display, which gives the OEM more opportunity to integrate more content into a natural line of sight, right where you need it.”
There are two types of digital HUDs on the market today – combiner projections, which use a dash-mounted transparent plate to direct the image into the driver’s field of view, and windshield projections, which use the windshield to direct the image. Both styles allow the driver to see necessary information, such as speed, navigation details, and road and weather conditions without taking their eyes off the road. Of course, DLP technology can work with either, but as Dickhart pointed out, Texas Instruments’ automotive DLP team is fundamentally focused on windshield-style displays. With more of these display systems arriving in new car models every year, it’s definitely only a matter of time before Dickhart and Texas Instruments will be leading optical semiconductors into an even more innovative and extraordinary application.