TurboLED Platform
TurboLED® is a novel technology to reduce display power consumption and enable displays to be more colourful, brighter and true-to-life. TurboLED® has the potential to reduce display power consumption by up to 50% to extend the daily battery life of portable devices, such as smartphones, tablets and laptops by several hours each day. TurboLED® also provides a path to create the World’s most colourful displays.
The images above show the photopic response of the human eye. It can be seen that human eyes are far less sensitive to deeper colours than lighter colours, and in fact when reds and blues become too deep in colour, we cannot see them at all. For this reason, it takes more power for displays to render deeper colours than lighter colours. This is depicted for deep and light red, green and blue, where in each case the sensitivity of the human eye is higher for the lighter colour than for the deeper colour.
However, the vast majority of pixels in a display image do not contain deep colours. Look around you. How many deep red, green and blue colours do you see? Studies show that approximately 90% of the pixels in an average display image, do not contain any deep red, or green colours at all.
The image on the right compares the design of a standard pixel used in state-of-the-art smartphone displays with the novel TurboLED pixel design. In the standard pixel design, the inefficient deep red, green and blue sub-pixels are used for all image pixels, regardless of the content of the image. In the TurboLED design, the efficient light red, green, and blue sub-pixels are used for most image pixels, while the inefficient deep red, green and blue pixels are only used when needed. This dramatically reduces the power consumption of the display.
The power savings from the novel TurboLED display design can be reinvested in the display, and the display can be made brighter or the deep colours can be made deeper. This is shown in the image on the right. The deep colours show the Rec. 2020 colour gamut depicted in the CIE 1931 (x, y) chromaticity diagram. TurboLED can enable displays to render the Rec. 2020 colour gamut.
The video shows a prototype TurboLED pixel that demonstrates the concept in a larger device. The pixel alternates between light green and deep green. In a display, the light green would be used for the majority of pixel images, while the deep green would only be used where needed.