Another report claims Apple's iPad 2 will sport a high-res display - Page 4

Yes, but what are we basing the idea that this is an "abrupt jump" on? As you say, nobody is using ultra-high-resolution 9.7" displays, but does that mean we can't make them? Do we really know when the iPhone 4's retina display became cost effective?

The article on Moore's Law and the retina display makes the following assumptions:

"We can assume that the biggest screens at "retina" density as of the iPhone 4's release - 960x640 in June 2010 - was the state of the art at the time. We can also assume that the iPad was the biggest you could go with the best process for that size at the time, 1024x768 in March 2010."

I think both of these assumptions are false. Firstly, June 2010 is, at best, an upper-bound on when the iPhone 4's retina display became cost effective. Surely it became cost effective many months before June 2010. Production would have ramped up long before then and Apple would have done its cost analysis earlier still. It's also possible that Apple could have used an even higher resolution display at the time but didn't because it wouldn't be exactly 2x resolution. Secondly, if Apple is planning to deliver a "retina display" for the iPad 2, it would have likely been aware of its plans when it chose to use a 1024x764 display in the current iPad. That display could have been explicitly chosen because Apple intended to use a 2048x1528 display in the second generation model. The iPad, I believe, was intentionally very conservative hardware-wise because it was an entirely new product category.

The figure he comes up with based on these two assumptions is 2012 for a 2x resolution update. If you believe the logic of the article but disagree with the assumptions, 2011 becomes a reasonable estimate.

I don't think even these revised assumptions are correct because I don't see any evidence at all that the computer and phone industry has been particularly interested in pursuing DPI. Android handset manufacturers, like PC vendors, choose displays based primarily on cost. Apple has been pursuing higher resolution displays and other manufacturers have responded by either offering higher resolution displays as an option or, eventually, moving to them as standard. But I've never thought of the PC industry, or the phone industry, as anything but extremely conservative on display resolution. So I don't think you can do this kind of analysis based on shipping products.

Personally I've yet to see any convincing evidence that a 9.7" 2x resolution display isn't cost effective right now. This kind of thing wouldn't be available to a start-up or small manufacturer, because they use off-the-shelf components, but to a cash-rich company that's heavily invested in the manufacturing plant and is looking to ship 20 million devices could do it if it's possible. And, like I say, I don't see any convincing evidence it's not possible. All that's been shown so far is that nobody else has done it yet.

I think this sums up why we have not really seen panels at much higher resolutions.

I also think that a significant portion of the $500M deal with LG done a while back was for the R&D necessary to get to such a mass-produced panel with much higher resolution.

Or, maybe I'm just dreaming.

Good post poke. The problem with that article were

1) Moores law does not apply to DPI ( or LCDs in general).
2) He applies this law - an 18 month time to double - at the wrong time assuming that the law applies on the very release day of the retina screen.

For that reason I'm oot.

OK! I read the linked article!

I may be way off base here, but I also have some experience in set semiconductor industry. In 1963, I was Data Processing Manager for Hoffman Electronics Semiconductor division. They actually grew silicon crystals, cut them into wafers, deposited chemical coatings on the wafers to make transistors, cut the individual parts from the wafers, tested the parts and packaged the parts into semi-finished goods. Later, the semi-finished parts were tested to more restrictive parameters based on products desired to qualify for military or commercial use. Products that passed the tests were marked (labeled) and packaged as finished goods and put into inventory and sold.

Still later, some finished parts could be retested for different or more restrictive parameters (maintain consistent performance over a broader temperature range, etc.). Those that passed these tests were unlabeled and/or unpackaged, then repackaged and/or relabeled as the new part and put into inventory and sold.

There is one other example of how things worked. Sometimes, several parts that did not pass tests could be used in combination to form another product with the desired characteristics -- if one part was off by -1, it could be combined with another part that was off by +1 (or 2 parts off by +.5) to yield the desired characteristics.

The testing, packaging, marking, retesting, repackaging and remarking often was many times more expensive than the manufacturing process.

Then, sometimes, they could go through the the whole manufacturing process, on the same machines -- the exact same way that they had done many times before... and everything would turn out differently.

The key to it all was the % yield from manufacturing and testing.


OK! That was before microcomputers -- with thousands of transistors on a chip.


In the early 1980's we installed some Apple ][ computer networks (LANS) for a company named Applied Materials. This was pioneering at the time and Applied Materials even had several LAN connections in their Board Room -- so it was visible at the highest level.

During the sales, installation and support of the Applied Materials installations, I was given several tours and had the opportunity to discuss state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing -- I was brought up to date.

Applied Materials was/is the leading manufacturer of machines and processes that deposit chemicals on silicon to give it the ability to conduct electricity.


http://www.appliedmaterials.com/


It's been a long time, but I do have some knowledge of the industry -- if not actual experience and bona fides.


I went through all that because I want to challenge parts of the "linked to article".

Like the writer of the linked article, I don't have experience with LCD manufacturing.

I did some surfing, and the LCD manufacturing appears quite different than transistors or microcomputers:

http://www.crystec.com/crylcde.htm


So, my first challenge: Does Moore's law apply to LCD manufacturing?


The article says (emphasis mine)s:


Here the author says that the retina display of 326 ppi on a 3.5-4" display had been evolving for several years -- and was just the next step.

Then he says, without citation, that 1024x768 or 132 ppi on a 9.7" display was state-of-the-art for March 2010.


So, my second challenge: What was state-of-the-art ppi for a 9.7" display in 2010?


The author gets a little sidetracked claiming that the iPad needs to be a multiple of the iPhone 4 retina display.

The iPhone to iPad question is already resolved -- all that needs to happen is that a new iPad rez needs to be able to handle 1x and 2x multiples of 480x320.

The need is for the iPad2 to handle 2x rez of the iPad1.


My final questions are:

If Moore's law doesn't apply and/or 1024x768 (132 ppi) on a 9.7" display is not state-of-the-art:

What is state-of-the art for 9.7" displays?

What is the expected yield/cost of these displays?

When will sufficient production capacity be in place to ramp up to 40 million units per year?

Or, if we assume a 2 tier product ratio 2 iPad1 :: 1 iPad2 -- when will sufficient production capacity be in place to ramp up to 13 million units per year?

I like that scenario!

I agree for current owners that the display is a must.

But, the iPad2 is/should target whole new markets -- medical, AV production, etc.

You saw the same inconsistencies, plus a few more.

Maybe another way to ask the question:

Are there any displays larger than 9.7" with the required 2x ppi currently available?

If yes, in what quantities, and at what costs?

Has more and better already been done?

Fool me once...
The Internet is an echo chamber.

'mber.......

No it wouldn't be an abrupt jump. The abrupt jump happened in 1999 when Lawrence Livermore Labs wanted 300dpi 30" LCD desktop displays for visualizing simulation results. They were delivered in 2000 at about $100K apiece to cover the custom R&D. Guess where the tech for lower res LCD televisions came from??? [also notice things went from ~150dpi SGI displays at 17" to 300dpi at 30" in less than 2 years. It wasn't conceptually that hard, they just had to scale up the fab machinery size. And it worked, pretty much first shot.]

The problems were in manufacturing the large panel without cracking, not in making the transistor density work. iPad screens are trivially sized for current glass panel sizes, yields will be very favorable because glass cracking in those sizes is minimal. The only issue is where is the producer? Somebody needs to set up a fab to do that.

The technical issues for a potential 2x iPad LCD are well in hand, and could be produceable in quantity if Apple was out in front of this for the past 6-9 months. Hmmmm. Who said they spent $3.9B on a major component purchase arrangement? That's the kind of cash that can reconfigure an LCD fab with around $3B left over.

It is an interesting thought experiment but really is no more or less convincing than any other speculation. It's possible LCDs follow Moore's law but I'm not at all convinced of that. I think LCD advances are driven more by economies of scale which comes from popular applications of the technology. In semiconductors, economy of scale is a given (Intel makes hundreds of millions of any one part).

Using his own arguments however, you can reach the opposite conclusion:
His basic assumption is that density doubles FOR THE SAME COST every 18 months.
Given that Apple wants 4x the density of the iPad, that should mean that it will take 3 years to get an 4X LCD for the same price.
The iPad was released in April 2010. There was very little discussion of the screen resolution as being particularly cutting edge and I wouldn't expect that Apple would use something particularly cutting edge in a version 1 product.
If we assume that the panel was state of the art some months before (let's say 6 months but we have no idea), then April 2011 is 18 months from then so 1 Moore's law generation.
So Apple could get a 2x panel now for the same cost. But the linked article supports the notion that you can get another 2x jump at double the cost.
So: the link would support the conclusion that Apple could use a 4x panel in the iPad2 as long as it was willing to pay double the cost for the screen.

Speculation is fun but pretty fruitless as none of us know the real constraints.

I'd like to see some links supporting the idea that it's trivially easy to scale up LCD densities as long as you're willing to set up the fab.

I guess we could reckon that there hasn't been a strong strategic advantage to releasing higher res displays than the competition, but that seems a bit counter-intuitive and I'm not sure what the explanation for not seeing these displays come to market would be otherwise.

Basically, you're arguing that there's this low hanging fruit of a leg up on the your competitors, but no one is picking it because.... they just haven't. But Apple will, because they're clever that way. I'm not quite seeing it.

Also, at some point we completely dropped the issues of power consumption and performance, that seem to me to be pretty significant issues for pushing a great many pixels on a power and CPU constrained device. A different issue, to be sure, but what I'm hearing is a kind of brusque assurance that Apple can and will make this happen, that it's actually just a matter of wanting to do it and getting it done. I think there are bigger hurdles than that.

Why are you even bothering to continue to post this stuff? It will not happen.
Digitimes has ZERO credibility:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/71552.html

Guys working at LGD, a main supplier of LCD panels for Ipad, gave me a hint.

" No change in resolution"

The LLM 300ppi LCDs are ancient history. Pre-Google days for the contract, Google in beta during the delivery. There are no links unless you want to make blind searches in the Wayback Machine, be my guest. The production development contract to delivery was less than 2 years. You won't find that anywhere, you have to know someone who was asking for them. There were only minor press releases about the tech when it was delivered. It's not like doing nuc simulations was something that was going to get a lot of intarweb mileage.

It's the fact that the production ppi ratio went from ~150 on the best SGI displays to a delivered run of 300ppi by 30" in less than than 2 years despite the problems with > 22" glass cracking that is the basis of caling the scaling solved. Only because it was. 10 years ago.

Its not an open problem that needs R&D. Its a previously solved problem that needs a market willing to pay enough that reconfiguring the fab to do a new non-standard screen size.




No. What other form factor needs a screen like a 10" iPad screen? None, they don't exist.

The iPad itself is the same argument. <sarcasm> Why would anyone make a 10" tablet. They just haven't. It couldn't be successful or it would already be produced.</sarcasm> But Apple did, because they're clever that way. I'm not quite seeing your argument anymore because it's the exact same argument. But now that a form factor exists that would use this admittedly oddball sized screen your lack of seeing the potential is just your lack of seeing the potential.




The backlight is the same, the transistor draw in the LCD itself is quite small, but not trivial. The only issue would be the necessary GPU horsepower. The new rumored GPU is several years engineering, and a couple process steps smaller -- meaning it is probably close to on par power draw at the higher fill rates compared to the current GPU. And with the OpenCL support a whole bunch of CPU draining heavy calcs can be funneled to the GPU where those transistors are drawing non-idle power already anyways. That means less CPU power draw is traded for more work for about the same power on the GPU -- a power win.

These aren't Apple special engineering tricks, these are just the established pattern in mobile device (including laptop) evolution. All quite plausible. Leaving the question -- does Apple see it as the correct economic time to pop the tech into the market, rather than is the tech generically ready. I can guarantee the Android tablets will have a couple that ship with greater than 1024x768 screen resolutions by the end of the year and use similar multi-core GPU technology and dual core CortexA9 derives SoCs. Most of those specs are already in play for spring summer tabs, the collective community won't miss an opportunity to attack the iPad exactly the same way Android phones with higher resolutions as a main selling point ate into iPhone growth before iPhone4 last summer.

I'm guessing that picking this "oddball size" must have ultimately been a visual and tactile choice, maybe based on whatever sense of harmonious proportion that led to such standards as 4:3 and the 8x10, to both of which it is close. Now that we have it, I think it feels absolutely right. But I think it was designed for the photograph, the page, and old cinema, and it flies in the face of the oppressively stretched 16:9, an alien form when it migrates from the big screen. 16:9 doesn't belong in the hands. All of which is to say that Apple has had this size all to itself. They're clever that way, as addabox says.


So there are two completely compelling reasons to double the resolution.

One is display of text, and especially photographs and film, their main 'content' reasons for picking the size to begin with. We will be bowled over by how pictures will look, mostly because we will have never seen such clear and beautiful large images, outside of medium-format slide viewers with Kodachrome inside, and how many of us have seen those? "And yet it moves!" It will be irresistible.

The other reason is that they can't allow others to get the jump on them again, if what you say is true about Android tablets to come. If it doesn't happen in April, there will have been technical problems or cost considerations. They must do it eventually. I hope it's this time around, given what you say about the competition.

Oh, and thanks for the technical background. Bracing, if true . . .

I read an estimate of approx. $150 in extra cost (not necessarily including other increased costs of supporting it). 40% gross margin brings that to $240, so if that's accurate and there's to be such a Pad this year, $799 is a likely base (no 3g) price.


Nope. Too much component cost increase - not enough "production experience" amortized for such new glass to bring a mass price this year. See above for estimated retail.





In terms of the original question no one's specifically mentioned the frequent confusion between "dpi" (a measurement of printed dots of ink per inch) and "ppi" (pixels/per inch on the screen). See: http://www.rideau-info.com/photos/mythdpi.html. You can make a 300 dpi print of the most pixelated source material, which will quite faithfully translate its unglory to a page as easily as one with deep pixel density that looks great at smoooth retina resolution


It was your option....

But I agree!

Well I guess you're right either way then....

If Apple fails to deliver the fabled high res iPad, they just decided it wasn't the "correct economic time", even though, apparently, there's absolutely no technical or financial hurdle between them and doing so.

I think you're conflating "is technically possible", which I've never disputed, and "is financially viable", which you're hedging on and which is the basis of my skepticism.

You seem to want to argue that it's actually nothing at all, aside some startup investment, to start cranking out the high res iPad screens, while leaving yourself an out with wondering after Apple's commitment to the technology, but I don't think you can have it both ways. Your insisting on a scenario wherein it would make no sense whatsoever for Apple not to take the iPad 2 to 2048x1536, so we'll see.

As far as Android devices with somewhat higher resolution screens and dual core processors, sure, but what of it? "Somewhat higher resolution" being broadly marketed doesn't make "massively higher resolution" more likely.

Yes, and all I meant by oddball size of the rumored 2x iPad display was it's uniqueness resolution-dimension pairing which absolutely nothing else uses.

I think QXGA is quite common for certain applications and has been for awhile.

Mostly agreed.


It's not a matter of me having it both ways. The decision tree is simple, either Apple has an agreement with a producer to crank out unique screens, or they don't. Technically, there's nothing special about producing screens in that size, but there are zero known fabs doing it. Meaning either Apple contracted a quiet set-up or Apple didn't.

That's not having it both ways, it's just saying all the poo-poohing over !ZOMG! 2x display density isn't possible! Is just plain bunk.

That simply leaves us with the flat-out obvious, Apple only does something tech-wise when they think it is economically advantageous.


There I'll just plain disagree. I'm convinced Steve and company aren't happy about all the screen size grief they took over the first half of last year. If there was ever a second-order financial motivation of removing a potential marketing weakness while simultaneously allowing a huge pronouncement of massive technical progress (even though it really wouldn't be that massive) and using that to make it EXTREMELY hard to be technically passed in the next 9 months or so, this would fit the bill. Using it to close out any significant threats in the market space until Apple is as long term strong in tabs as they were in year two of the iPhone.

What the real $20 question is is this: Was Apple thinking this way in first quarter last year? If so the 2x screen has a real chance of showing up sooner rather than later. If they didn't start thinking this way until sometime in the summer I don't think it could happen yet.

Either way I'm not predicting, I've merely stated why the "it is not possible arguments" are incorrect. And then added my own 2 cents on why it might make sense on an aggressive timescale. Very different from saying it will happen. Hedging, yes a bit. I've been wrong on both sides of predictions enough before, so now I just dabble in the technical discussion part where I actually have a clue and leave the actual business to Apple.

But not in a 10-inch touchscreen LCD as far as I have seen. Projectors, I've seen a few high end ones for virtual reality applications, but those don't count in an iPad context - completely different tech.

I probably should have searched for some, I can see several garden variety LCDs in the form factor at 10" now. Had I done that earlier we could have shut down the entire is it even possible to double the resolution display question with a "here's the link..."

I don't think Apple would even need to change the finger tracking resolution, just work out the production bonding for the capacitive layer making the whole line engineering problem easier than I even thought. I got myself running through territory that wasn't even necessary even though it's true.

Thanks for the virtual wake up slap! So much for oddball sizes...

Some things to consider for those who keep saying its impossible:

- as mentioned above, the resolution is a standard resolution (QXGA) and was more common back in the days of CRTs where almost everything was 4:3. When I worked at ATI, I used to have a 20/21" CRT with that exact resolution (that monster practically took up half my desk too).

- back in 2006, Sanyo-Epson announced a 7.1 inch 1080p LCD. (http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/17/s...e-worlds-smal/). So its not entirely unreasonable to assume a 9.7 inch QXGA given another 5 years (an eternity in tech). Why didn't it take off back then? Dunno, but my guess would be they didn't have the CPU/GPUs to drive it sufficiently back then.

- there was also this announcement just last year: http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/...hame-20101026/
a 4.8" 1080p display. If you double that, you would theoretically have a 9.6" greater than QXGA display.

Welcome to the forum. I don’t think anyone reasonable is saying it’s impossible, merely that it’s improbable.

It’s not that we can’t do a 262 ppi on a display. It’s not that we can’t do 2048x1536 pixels on a display. It’s not that we can’t push 3.15M pixels on a GPU. It’s not that we can’t make 65M displays over the next 12 months. It’s trying to wrap all those things into one package whilst making it cost effective and power efficient to the point that it’s a feasible option for the 2011 iPad.


PS: Thanks for the link to the Ortustech display. That is one I hadn’t seen. Why did they make that display besides trying to get free press? Does 458 ppi really make it that much better than the iPhone 4? If you have better than 20/18 vision, maybe, but if making the best looking display was their goal then why stick with a weak TN panel with a 160° viewing angle and not one of the better panel times with 178° viewing angle?

Excuse me -- didn't you mean to say the 2011 iPad? (just kidding)

Something to consider with the argument that it’s "technically possible”...

— Were there better than 160 ppi displays in 2007, 2008 and 2009? Yes, so why did the first three iPhones only have a 160 ppi display?



I did mean 2011, but I do wonder if it’ll be possible in 2012.

Nostradamus lives!