Significantly Extend Handheld Device Battery Life with DPO

Powered with DPO, VEE and high speed serial display technologies, the ArcticLink II VX solution platform family brings TV-quality visual experience to your mobile device.

The ArcticLink II VX solution platform family integrates Visual Enhancement Engine (VEE), Display Power Optimizer (DPO), Framebuffer, MDDI, and programmable fabric technologies into a single device solution for consumer mobile devices. This highly integrated, yet flexible platform makes it the ideal solution for display and connectivity subsystems of handheld portable devices.

• VEE enables sunlight viewability through dynamic range control resulting in a TV-quality visual experience
• DPO significantly reduces display power consumption through intelligent control of backlight brightness
• MDDI v1.2 Type 2 Client, RGB, or CPU Bus
• Up to 32 Mbits of embedded frame buffer using very lower power CellularRAM technology

 

VEE and DPO Architecture

Programmable Fabric Architecture

The ArcticLink® II VX solution platform also includes an ultra low power programmable fabric based on QuickLogic’s proprietary ViaLink® technology. As more mobile designs are adopting a platform design methodology, the flexibility of the programmable fabric becomes key to adapting to market requirements quickly and to to accelerate time-to-market. The programmable fabric enables flexible configurations for different processors, displayss and use cases. It can be used to implement additional visual enhancement functions such as alpha blending, and connectivity solutions such as UART, SPI and SDIO interfaces.

Display Enhancement Technologies — DPO and VEE

Displays typically consume 30% to 60% of the total system power. A common method, such as Content Adaptive Backlight Control (CABC), reduces backlight or brightness levels to save power. However, CABC significantly diminishes the viewing experience of content details, particularly in darker content.

QuickLogic’s approach using DPO and VEE is a radical advancement from primitive CABC technology. QuickLogic takes the idea of being content aware two steps further by evaluating the value of each individual pixel and the statistics of all the nearby pixels. Using that information, VEE adjusts the value of the individual pixels, while DPO adjusts the brightness. The ability to provide a unique tone curve for each pixel, as well as have tight control over the display backlight, gives greater flexibility than the global adjustment performed by CABC, which results is greater power savings and the entirely new capability of adapting to a bright environment.

DPO also seamlessly integrates with QuickLogic’s VEE, ensuring a longer battery life and an excellent visual experience by coupling the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) driving the display backlight with the display content processing parameters of the VEE technology.  DPO has been demonstrated to save as much as 41% battery life in form-factor OEM systems.