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Posted on 7/25/09 at 8:47 pm to Zilla
Great find. Will read sometime this week.
Posted on 7/28/09 at 4:05 pm to Proejo
check out syndiant's CTO interview :
LINK
and here are some comments from a private MVIS investor forum picking apart the inverview () indicate the comments.... :
Selected Quotes with my comments (this guy is a real piece of work):
Karl has agreed to answer a few questions we had, and hopefully this interview will clarify things a bit. Obviously we'll have to wait a few years to find out who is right [even the interviewer doesn't know who to believe, thanks to Karl's poor answers], and whether LBS projectors will be successful or not...
Karl is the CTO and co-founder of Syndiant, and has 32 years of experience in semiconductors. Prior to Syndiant, Karl worked at Texas Instruments and Silicon Display. Karl is named as inventor on 138 issued US patents, including some for LCoS microdisplays [However the majority are owned by Texas Instruments, and Syndiant has *none* - not even any patent applications!] and Karl has an M.Sc from the University of Michigan.
Q. Karl, thanks again for this interview. Can you give us some background info on Syndiant and your pico projector solution and products?
Syndiant was founded in 2004 to develop Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) microdisplays with all-digital display processor on the silicon. Syndiant's first devices were 1920x1080P with over 12-bits per pixel of color depth aimed at the rear projection television (RPTV) market. Seeing the decline in RPTV and having developed small pixels with a programmable architecture, Syndiant found that its technology could support small high resolution microdisplays for the emerging pico projector market. [Translation: We tried to copy TI's DLP and found out, like they did, that this approach was "not viable," so now, like them, we're trying to repurpose it into something else (and keep the funding flowing). God help us if we're wrong again.]"
Syndiant is the leader in high resolution microdisplays in small packages [They don't actually have any products on the market, but they're the "leader" ???]. We are currently sampling the SYL2010 with 854x600 true pixels, the highest resolution device that is less than 7mm tall. Syndiant is working on devices under 6mm tall and devices with higher resolution. [Notice the clever contstruction here and how he *didn't* say devices under 6mm tall with higher resolution. Meaning that their higher resolution devices, like DLP, will be much larger, though he wants to give you the impression that they won't be.]
Note that SYL2010 is just the first member of our pico projector family that was completed quite a while ago [but still isn't on the market???]. You can expect to see both smaller devices and higher resolution devices from Syndiant in the near future [again notice how he is careful to not say: "smaller, higher resolution devices, because they can't do both - for panel displays, higher resolution means bigger].
Q. Are you selling the projector modules already? Are there any products out there that use your technology? A. Syndiant sells the LCOS microdisplays and the ASIC to control them. While we have built some demo projectors for internal use and customer demonstrations, production products with our microdisplays are being developed by our optical partners and customers [so in other words, no].
Syndiant is in the volume sampling and will soon be starting mass production [they've had a completed product for "quite a while" and they've been saying this for quite a while. Demo devices have been around since last year. Why the delay turning them into actual products?].
Q. You have raised 12.1M$ total so far, including 3.5M$ recently (March 2009). Will you need more funding? We are currently raising money to help fund our ramp into mass production. We have multiple customers that are telling us they want well more than 1 million units in 2010 and we are in the process of growing to meet the market needs. [If they're seeing that kind of demand, that's a good thing, though it's hard to understand why with a completed product and a fabless model, they need more funding to ramp to mass production.]
Q. In your web site you mention a full HDTV with 1920x1080P resolution in volume production in 2010. Will this be a pico projector? Are you still on track for that? Is it practical?
We have the technology to make a 1920x1080P device for pico projectors and this device would certainly be small and cost effective for a pico projector, but the exact schedule for this device may change. The huge demand we are seeing for embedded cell phone devices has us re-evaluating where we prioritize the development of the 1080P for pico projectors. [Translation: No. And please don't ask me more about it, because I don't want to have to tell you how large the panel is.]
Q. In a recent blog post, you have made some claims, and I'd be happy if you can give some more info. You said that laser-beam-steering projectors (LBS) are 'just not viable'. Several companies were not happy with those comments...
Laser bean steering appears to be one of those things that may sound great in theory but has a lot of problems in practice. The cost and availability alone should rule out LBS out for more than 99% of the potential market and the image quality appears much worse than can be achieved for much less with other technologies.
Quoting from Forbes Magazine dated June 08, 2009, "Once Microvision is making large volumes of its component, Tokman [CEO of Microvision] believes, the devices will cost equipment makers $100 apiece." My goodness, I don't know anyone else that thinks pico projectors will ever go "large volumes" when "costing equipment makers $100 apiece." [My goodness, Tokman has also mentioned other (lower) transfer costs, and the fact is that we won't know for sure what the volume production costs will be until we get there - for Microvision as well as Syndiant. What will it cost to put a cooling system into a phone to bleed off the heat from a panel display? Is it even possible, or is that "not viable?"]
LINK
and here are some comments from a private MVIS investor forum picking apart the inverview () indicate the comments.... :
Selected Quotes with my comments (this guy is a real piece of work):
Karl has agreed to answer a few questions we had, and hopefully this interview will clarify things a bit. Obviously we'll have to wait a few years to find out who is right [even the interviewer doesn't know who to believe, thanks to Karl's poor answers], and whether LBS projectors will be successful or not...
Karl is the CTO and co-founder of Syndiant, and has 32 years of experience in semiconductors. Prior to Syndiant, Karl worked at Texas Instruments and Silicon Display. Karl is named as inventor on 138 issued US patents, including some for LCoS microdisplays [However the majority are owned by Texas Instruments, and Syndiant has *none* - not even any patent applications!] and Karl has an M.Sc from the University of Michigan.
Q. Karl, thanks again for this interview. Can you give us some background info on Syndiant and your pico projector solution and products?
Syndiant was founded in 2004 to develop Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) microdisplays with all-digital display processor on the silicon. Syndiant's first devices were 1920x1080P with over 12-bits per pixel of color depth aimed at the rear projection television (RPTV) market. Seeing the decline in RPTV and having developed small pixels with a programmable architecture, Syndiant found that its technology could support small high resolution microdisplays for the emerging pico projector market. [Translation: We tried to copy TI's DLP and found out, like they did, that this approach was "not viable," so now, like them, we're trying to repurpose it into something else (and keep the funding flowing). God help us if we're wrong again.]"
Syndiant is the leader in high resolution microdisplays in small packages [They don't actually have any products on the market, but they're the "leader" ???]. We are currently sampling the SYL2010 with 854x600 true pixels, the highest resolution device that is less than 7mm tall. Syndiant is working on devices under 6mm tall and devices with higher resolution. [Notice the clever contstruction here and how he *didn't* say devices under 6mm tall with higher resolution. Meaning that their higher resolution devices, like DLP, will be much larger, though he wants to give you the impression that they won't be.]
Note that SYL2010 is just the first member of our pico projector family that was completed quite a while ago [but still isn't on the market???]. You can expect to see both smaller devices and higher resolution devices from Syndiant in the near future [again notice how he is careful to not say: "smaller, higher resolution devices, because they can't do both - for panel displays, higher resolution means bigger].
Q. Are you selling the projector modules already? Are there any products out there that use your technology? A. Syndiant sells the LCOS microdisplays and the ASIC to control them. While we have built some demo projectors for internal use and customer demonstrations, production products with our microdisplays are being developed by our optical partners and customers [so in other words, no].
Syndiant is in the volume sampling and will soon be starting mass production [they've had a completed product for "quite a while" and they've been saying this for quite a while. Demo devices have been around since last year. Why the delay turning them into actual products?].
Q. You have raised 12.1M$ total so far, including 3.5M$ recently (March 2009). Will you need more funding? We are currently raising money to help fund our ramp into mass production. We have multiple customers that are telling us they want well more than 1 million units in 2010 and we are in the process of growing to meet the market needs. [If they're seeing that kind of demand, that's a good thing, though it's hard to understand why with a completed product and a fabless model, they need more funding to ramp to mass production.]
Q. In your web site you mention a full HDTV with 1920x1080P resolution in volume production in 2010. Will this be a pico projector? Are you still on track for that? Is it practical?
We have the technology to make a 1920x1080P device for pico projectors and this device would certainly be small and cost effective for a pico projector, but the exact schedule for this device may change. The huge demand we are seeing for embedded cell phone devices has us re-evaluating where we prioritize the development of the 1080P for pico projectors. [Translation: No. And please don't ask me more about it, because I don't want to have to tell you how large the panel is.]
Q. In a recent blog post, you have made some claims, and I'd be happy if you can give some more info. You said that laser-beam-steering projectors (LBS) are 'just not viable'. Several companies were not happy with those comments...
Laser bean steering appears to be one of those things that may sound great in theory but has a lot of problems in practice. The cost and availability alone should rule out LBS out for more than 99% of the potential market and the image quality appears much worse than can be achieved for much less with other technologies.
Quoting from Forbes Magazine dated June 08, 2009, "Once Microvision is making large volumes of its component, Tokman [CEO of Microvision] believes, the devices will cost equipment makers $100 apiece." My goodness, I don't know anyone else that thinks pico projectors will ever go "large volumes" when "costing equipment makers $100 apiece." [My goodness, Tokman has also mentioned other (lower) transfer costs, and the fact is that we won't know for sure what the volume production costs will be until we get there - for Microvision as well as Syndiant. What will it cost to put a cooling system into a phone to bleed off the heat from a panel display? Is it even possible, or is that "not viable?"]
Posted on 7/28/09 at 4:05 pm to Zilla
There are also many more well understood techniques for dealing with speckle with lasers illuminating microdisplays whereas most people I talk to [my Mom, my therapist] say that despeckle for LBS is never going to be very good due to the need for a tightly focused pixel size beam. [When people say "most people I talk to," you'd be surprised at who they actually mean']
The speckle with LBS systems creates a noisy looking image and worse yet as you move your head the speckle moves [Wow, that shows how uninformed he is - he's obviously never actually seen one. When you move your head, the speckle actually disappears.] The LBS demos I have seen to date seem to choose demo content with dark backgrounds that will make speckle less noticeable. I have yet to see a LSB demo of a bright white background [obvioulsy, Google is not his friend, since a recent demo shows a projected Sony ViaoP desktop that looks great.]
Q. You mention eye-safety issues with lasers. Is this real? Isn't those lasers just like the laser-pointers we all use? Why is laser more dangerous than LED? (especially as it's a moving laser, so it will not stay on one point in the eye for long, and the brightness/energy on each 'pixel' is the same as in other projectors).
I would suggest you ask the LBS companies and laser makers how bright a LBS can legally go before they require a special performance permit [which is another way of saying that he has no idea - some CTO!]; the answer I have been told repeatedly [by my Mom and my therapist, and the web boards I read] is somewhere between 10 and 20 lumens. With lasers illuminating LCOS, the laser light exiting the projector is much more spread out and thus higher brightness levels can be achieved within existing regulated safety limits. [LBS divides light over time as well as space. This is *exactly* equivalent to spreading it out over space only, as long as there's a fail-safe that shuts off the light if the mirror stops moving. The fact that Karl doesn't understand this makes me happy he's not my CTO.]
Q. You say that LBS projectors will be more expensive, more power-hungry, with less resolution and colors. I have seen a demo of a laser projector against a Color-Filter LCoS, and I have to say that besides the speckle, the image is much brighter and the colors are better. Also a laser can be turned to a lower energy on less-bright pixels in the image... Will your LCoS based projector deliver much better quality than color-filter LCoS? Can you clarify those claims?
In terms of power, with LBS you have to consider the power that is used to make the lasers switch fast enough to turn the pixel on and off in the time of 1 pixel. This requires high speed analog power drivers that can consume considerable power. [that "can consume considerable power?" Translation: I have no idea, but I read that on a message board, and it seems like a good piece of FUD. What Karl neglects to mention is that the highest consumer of power in a projector is the light source, and panel displays waste huge percentages of that power and turn it into heat.]
Q. Where do you see the Pico Projector market in 3 years? What role will Syndiant make?
I don't want to give too much away, but Syndiant is the leader in resolution and size for pico projector microdisplays and we plan on maintaining that leadership. With our small pixel technology enabling high resolution in a small package and low manufacturing cost we are exceptionally well positioned for this market. It looks like the sweet spot for cell phones initially is going to be WVGA (854 by 480 pixels) and I expect that we will soon see 720P (1280 by 720 pixels) in cell phone projectors. In the PC accessory, video game, media player, and camera markets, I see the resolution quickly migrating to 720P and 1080P (1920x1080). [This is basically an admission that Syndiant (and other panel display makers) won't be able to create a 1080P chip small enough (or cool enough) for a cell phone.] Nice Job, Karl. :-)
The speckle with LBS systems creates a noisy looking image and worse yet as you move your head the speckle moves [Wow, that shows how uninformed he is - he's obviously never actually seen one. When you move your head, the speckle actually disappears.] The LBS demos I have seen to date seem to choose demo content with dark backgrounds that will make speckle less noticeable. I have yet to see a LSB demo of a bright white background [obvioulsy, Google is not his friend, since a recent demo shows a projected Sony ViaoP desktop that looks great.]
Q. You mention eye-safety issues with lasers. Is this real? Isn't those lasers just like the laser-pointers we all use? Why is laser more dangerous than LED? (especially as it's a moving laser, so it will not stay on one point in the eye for long, and the brightness/energy on each 'pixel' is the same as in other projectors).
I would suggest you ask the LBS companies and laser makers how bright a LBS can legally go before they require a special performance permit [which is another way of saying that he has no idea - some CTO!]; the answer I have been told repeatedly [by my Mom and my therapist, and the web boards I read] is somewhere between 10 and 20 lumens. With lasers illuminating LCOS, the laser light exiting the projector is much more spread out and thus higher brightness levels can be achieved within existing regulated safety limits. [LBS divides light over time as well as space. This is *exactly* equivalent to spreading it out over space only, as long as there's a fail-safe that shuts off the light if the mirror stops moving. The fact that Karl doesn't understand this makes me happy he's not my CTO.]
Q. You say that LBS projectors will be more expensive, more power-hungry, with less resolution and colors. I have seen a demo of a laser projector against a Color-Filter LCoS, and I have to say that besides the speckle, the image is much brighter and the colors are better. Also a laser can be turned to a lower energy on less-bright pixels in the image... Will your LCoS based projector deliver much better quality than color-filter LCoS? Can you clarify those claims?
In terms of power, with LBS you have to consider the power that is used to make the lasers switch fast enough to turn the pixel on and off in the time of 1 pixel. This requires high speed analog power drivers that can consume considerable power. [that "can consume considerable power?" Translation: I have no idea, but I read that on a message board, and it seems like a good piece of FUD. What Karl neglects to mention is that the highest consumer of power in a projector is the light source, and panel displays waste huge percentages of that power and turn it into heat.]
Q. Where do you see the Pico Projector market in 3 years? What role will Syndiant make?
I don't want to give too much away, but Syndiant is the leader in resolution and size for pico projector microdisplays and we plan on maintaining that leadership. With our small pixel technology enabling high resolution in a small package and low manufacturing cost we are exceptionally well positioned for this market. It looks like the sweet spot for cell phones initially is going to be WVGA (854 by 480 pixels) and I expect that we will soon see 720P (1280 by 720 pixels) in cell phone projectors. In the PC accessory, video game, media player, and camera markets, I see the resolution quickly migrating to 720P and 1080P (1920x1080). [This is basically an admission that Syndiant (and other panel display makers) won't be able to create a 1080P chip small enough (or cool enough) for a cell phone.] Nice Job, Karl. :-)
Posted on 7/30/09 at 10:07 am to Zilla
new highs today
Posted on 8/5/09 at 8:35 am to Zilla
quote:
new highs today
But OUCH!!! today....
Posted on 8/6/09 at 10:56 am to LSURussian
history of no news on CCs .....i thought about taking some of my long term holdings off ....but i didn't.... this is the CC we've all been waiting for, I hope
Posted on 8/6/09 at 2:24 pm to Zilla
what a swing !!!! I just took a tad off in my roth just b/c I think this may be as good as the news gets TODAY
Posted on 9/15/09 at 9:05 pm to Zilla
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