We have started seeing some trade-press articles lately about highly integrated displays, by which I mean displays that incorporate much of the support circuitry that traditionally resides in discrete semiconductor packages on a printed-circuit board. The vision of higher integration over time has had various faces, with the ultimate being the so-called system-on-panel or system-on-glass, a long-heralded phenomenon which transforms the display from a system-attached component to the platform for the system itself. The first step towards higher display integration, of course, has involved drivers, which have been brought closer to the display in the interests of economy in a variety of ways, sometimes utilizing packaged semiconductor drivers and sometimes bare driver dice. These include chip-on-flex (COF) cable, chip-on-board (COB), and chip-on-glass (COG). But the active-matrix revolution in LCDs put an entirely different face on the essence of integration, adding transistors and associated capacitors to the electronics mix but fashioning them on the display substrate itself using thin-film-semiconductor fabrication processes, rather than relying on the mounting of discrete ICs.
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