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Microvision's development of the light engine behind its laser-based PicoP platform for cellphones is "more or less done" with a few "minor tweaks" needed, Product Applications Engineer Andrew Rosen said. The RGB lasers, with power in the "tens of milliwatts", are designed in a 1.57x0.79x0.28- inch package, Rosen said. The thickness could shrink to 0.20 to 0.24 inches by the time the first PicoP-based products reach market in late 2008, he said. PicoP is based on Microvision's microelectromechanical system (MEMS), consisting of minilasers and a tiny pivoting microscanner mirror that reflects light on a surface one pixel at a time, so fast a whole screen appears lit. Some work remains on the two ASICs that will handle the MEMS drive and laser feedback, he said. Much will depend on whether the lasers are made using a 45-nanometer process, said Rosen. The ASICs will operate at "several hundred" megahertz, but won't require the same clock speeds that digital signal processors need for HDTV, he said. "It comes down to what scale do we want the ASICs and what the interface is," he said. The lasers have "stabilized" since being demonstrated in May at the Society for Information show, with work moving to a third version of the green laser, he said. The red laser remains 20 to 30 nanometers from the targeted "sweet spot," Rosen said. Hitting that sweet spot could increase brightness four to five lumens, he said. The prototype PicoP demonstrated at CEATEC features 10 to 12 lumens and 854x480 resolution. "Where we are limited right now is red," Rosen said. "Most commercially available red lasers are not in the sweet spot because they are optimized for DVD or something else," Rosen said. Osram, Novalux and Corning have been developing lasers for the PicoP platform - Novalux and Corning focusing on green. Microvision's nonexclusive development pact with Motorola for cellphones is "progressing nicely" said Rosen, declining further comment. Cellphone development cycles usually run about 12 months. Microvision demonstrated a laser-based heads-up display it's designing with Visteon for vehicular applications. In vehicles, the laser is housed in the dashboard and bounced off an aspheric mirror to project an image on the windshield. The brightness required is about the same as for cellphones, but the resolution is about 200x300 vs. 854x480, Rosen said. "We take 200x300 in, do the image manipulation out to 800x600 and then downstep it again," Rosen said. "That's how we get the accuracy and the ability to twist" the image.-- Mark Seavy

# posted by Broker A @ 12:09 PM