Freescale to Integrate E Ink Controller into CPUs

Freescale and E Ink said Tuesday that Freescale would integrate the E Ink display controller in its own chips, reducing cost and increasing the performance of e-book readers.

Specifically, Freescale's i.MX processor technology will be integrated with E Ink's Vizplex display controller, saving an estimated 20 percent in the total bill of materials of an e-reader, according to Glen Burchers, director of consumer segment marketing for Freescale, in an interview.

Although there are a number of public e-readers either available or on the horizon – the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble "Nook" e-reader, the Plastic Logic e-reader, the iREX, and the Spring Design "Alex" Android-powered e-reader, Burchers said that the number of customers Freescale is working with is "10X" the number of that Freescale worked with from 2008 until 2009.

Many of of them, however, use the E Ink technology, first developed in 2004 and now nearly the "Intel Inside" of the e-reader market. The technology uses an array of microcapsules filled with charged ink, which can hold their orientation with a virtually no power, providing battery life in terms of days to weeks.

Freescale claims it has 80 percent of the processor market for e-readers. But 80 percent of those, according to Burchers, are being developed overseas, apparently like LG's prototype solar-powered e-reader.

"I know we're working with ten new companies; a lot of these are for overseas markets," Burchers said. He noted that while the U.S. has 26,000 educational jurisdictions that each must approve an e-reader for classroom use, China has just one.

"We're heavily invested into the e-book market," Burchers said.

Specifically, the Vizplex controller will be integrated into an i.MX-based system-on-a-chip, although Burchers declined to specify when the chip would be available. Typically, tying together two IP cores can take a matter of months; products would almost certainly be available in 2010 at the earliest. Burchers declined to comment on shipment dates or the process technology; the current i.MX is fabricated using 90-nm technology, he said, and is based on the ARM11 core.

According to a 2009 DisplaySearch report, e-book unit shipments are expected to grow from 1 million units in 2008 to over 75 million units in 2018, a market with a total value of approximately $3.8 billion.

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