A Novel ReRAM-Based Architecture of Field Sequential Color Driver for High-Resolution LCoS Displays

Abstract

Liquid crystal on-silicon (LCoS) display is one of the most representative micro-display technologies, and is widely adopted in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices thanks to a relatively simple structure using a semiconductor manufacturing process to realize high-resolution displays. However, the structural complexity to handle color frames by field sequential color (FSC) scheme hinders more widespread adoptions of the LCoS displays. In this article, to resolve the problem, we propose a novel FSC driver architecture using resistive random access memory (ReRAM) that diminishes the driver's structural complexity with matrix-vector multiplications. The proposed architecture leverages fast matrix-vector multiplications with a memristor crossbar array to expedite the FSC operation that extracts the individual red, green, and blue color sub-frames from an entire image. We present the hardware performance of our architecture that is implemented using the crossbar array and peripheral circuits. Compared to the conventional static random access memory (SRAM)-based architecture, we confirm that the proposed design is much superior in terms of chip size, leakage power, and frame rate in various image resolutions. Specifically, the chip size and leakage power are reduced by up to 96% and 99%, respectively, and the frame rate is improved by up to 36%. We also analyze image quality loss caused by ReRAM read and write noise.