Silicon Light Machines Corporation

Bryan P Straker

David M Bloom

Dave B Corbin

Paul A Alioshin

Richard John Aras

William C Banyai

A diffraction grating light valve modulates an incident beam of light. A plurality of elongated elements each have a reflective surface. The elongated elements are suspended with their respective ends substantially coplanar. Alternate ones of the elongated elements are electrically coupled for receiving a first bias voltage. The interdigitated elongated elements are electrically coupled for receiving a second bias voltage. By applying a appropriate first and second biasing voltages, all the reflective surfaces can be maintained in a first plane. When all the elongated elements are in the first plane, the diffraction grating light valve reflects the beam of light. A predetermined group of the elongated elements, preferably alternate ones, are deformable to be substantially coplanar in a second plane which is parallel to the first plane. When the predetermined group of elements is in the second plane, the diffraction grating light valve diffracts the beam of light.

Flat diffraction grating light valve

A time interleaved bit addressed weighted pulse width modulation (PWM) method and apparatus reduces the bandwidth requirement necessary for providing a plurality of data entries regarding multiple points of information. As is well known, a weighted PWM scheme modulates an output by utilizing a frame time that is divided into events of varying durations; most conventional schemes have each bit in the frame being half the duration of its predecessor. The modulated signal is activated during all, some or none of the events in the frame to develop a signal representing a particular parameter. This method and apparatus can be used in a display for selecting among varying levels of gray scale or from among multiple colors on a palette. In one application for a display, a register containing the same number of data pits as pixels in a row of the display is provided. The register is loaded with one bit per frame for each pixel in the entire row. The bandwidth is reduced because the bit for each of the pixels are not all for the same weight event. This allows a bit for a long duration event to be displayed in one pixel, while more than one bit for shorter duration events to be displayed in another pixel. This obviates the need to load one bit for each pixel in the row during the shortest event duration. The organization of the sequence of the events amongst the various rows can be pseudo-random to achieve reduced bandwidth. If the organization is pseudo-random the order can be pre-selected for an optimized bandwidth or organized into a predetermined format to achieve a pseudo-random effect.

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Bryan P Straker