IP Library Granted Patent US 12,437,696
Granted Patent B2
US 12,437,696 · App. 18/358,012 · Granted Oct 7, 2025

Emission row shuffling for pulsed electronic displays

Inventors: Yaser Azizi (Santa Clara, CA); Haitao Li (Mountain View, CA); Hopil Bae (Palo Alto, CA); Mahdi Farrokh Baroughi (Santa Clara, CA); Xiang Lu (Campbell, CA); Seung B Rim (Pleasanton, CA)
Assignee: Apple Inc.
G09G3/2085G09G3/2096G09G3/32G09G2300/0452G09G2300/06G09G2310/08G09G2320/0261G09G2320/0266
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,437,696
App. No.
18/358,012
Granted
Oct 7, 2025
Kind
B2
Abstract

Electronic devices, displays, and methods are provided for performing row shuffling to reduce an appearance of image artifacts during eye movements such as saccades. An electronic display may include a number of rows of display pixels and driving circuitry to drive the rows of pixels. The driving circuitry may spatially shuffle or temporally shuffle, or both spatially and temporally shuffle, a row order of driving the rows of display pixels.

Claims (48)

1. An electronic display comprising:

a plurality of rows of light emitting diode display pixels comprising a first set of rows of display pixels and a second set of rows of display pixels; and

driving circuitry configured to spatially shuffle or temporally shuffle, or both spatially shuffle and temporally shuffle, a row order of driving the plurality of rows of display pixels by:

driving the first set of rows of display pixels based on a first monotonically from a top row to a bottom row of the first set of rows of display pixels increasing order; and

driving the second set of rows of display pixels based on a second monotonically from a bottom row to a top row of the second set of rows of display pixels decreasing order.

2. The electronic display of claim 1 , wherein the driving circuitry comprises:

a first micro-light emitting diode (LED) driver configured to drive the first set of the rows of pixels in the first monotonically increasing order; and

a second micro-LED driver configured to drive the second set of the rows of pixels in the second monotonically decreasing order.

3. The electronic display of claim 1 , wherein the driving circuitry is configured to temporally shuffle the row order of driving the plurality of rows by driving a first set of the rows of pixels in the first monotonically increasing order during a first subframe and driving the first set of the rows of pixels in the second monotonically decreasing order during a second subframe.

4. The electronic display of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of rows of display pixels are divided into columns of local passive matrices configured to be individually controlled by the driving circuitry to emit light row-by-row.

5. The electronic display of claim 4 , wherein the driving circuitry is configured to spatially shuffle the row order of driving the plurality of rows by driving a first set of the rows of pixels of a first column in the first monotonically increasing order and driving the first set of the rows of pixels of a second column in the second monotonically decreasing order.

6. The electronic display of claim 5 , wherein the driving circuitry comprises:

a first micro-light emitting diode (LED) driver configured to drive the first set of the rows of pixels of the first column in the first monotonically increasing order; and

a second micro-LED driver configured to drive the first set of the rows of pixels of the second column in the second order, wherein the first order is different from the second monotonically decreasing order.

7. The electronic display of claim 4 , wherein the driving circuitry is configured to spatially shuffle the row order of driving the plurality of rows by driving all of the rows of pixels of a first column in the first monotonically increasing order and driving all of the rows of pixels of a second column in the second monotonically decreasing order.

8. The electronic display of claim 4 , wherein the driving circuitry is configured to spatially shuffle the row order of driving the plurality of rows by driving all of a first set of the rows of pixels of all columns in the first monotonically increasing order and driving all of a second set of the rows of pixels of all columns in the second monotonically decreasing order.

9. The electronic display of claim 1 , wherein the driving circuitry comprises a plurality of micro-light emitting diode (LED) drivers configured to programmably select rows to spatially shuffle or temporally shuffle, or both spatially and temporally shuffle, a row order of driving the plurality of rows of display pixels based on the first monotonically increasing order and the second monotonically decreasing order.

10. The electronic display of claim 1 , wherein the driving circuitry is configured to:

at a first time, drive the first set of rows of the display pixels based on the first monotonically increasing order and drive the second set of rows of display pixels based on the second monotonically decreasing order; and

at a second time, drive the first set of rows of the display pixels based on a third order.

11. The electronic display of claim 10 , wherein the third order comprises a row order that alternates rows, wherein two adjacent rows are not driven in sequence.

12. One or more tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to cause operations comprising:

spatially shuffling an order of driving a plurality of rows of light emitting diode display pixels of an electronic display by:

causing at least some display pixels of a first set of the rows of display pixels to be driven in a first monotonically from a top row to a bottom row of the first set of rows of display pixels increasing order; and

causing at least some display pixels of a second set of the rows of display pixels to be driven in a second monotonically from a bottom row to a top row of the second set of rows of display pixels decreasing order; or

temporally shuffling an order of driving a plurality of rows of light emitting diode display pixels of an electronic display by:

causing at least some display pixels of a first set of the rows of display pixels to be driven in a first monotonically increasing order from a top row to a bottom row of the first set of rows of display pixels during a first frame or subframe; and

causing the at least some display pixels of the first set of the rows of display pixels to be driven in a second monotonically decreasing order from the bottom row to the top row of the first set of rows of display pixels during a second frame or subframe.

13. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable media of claim 12 , wherein the causing the at least some display pixels of the first set of the rows of display pixels to be driven in the first monotonically increasing order comprises generating first image data for a first micro-light emitting diode (LED) driver of the electronic display according to the first monotonically increasing order, and wherein the causing the at least some display pixels of the second set of the rows of display pixels to be driven in the second monotonically decreasing order comprises generating second image data for a second micro-LED driver of the electronic display according to the second monotonically decreasing order.

14. The one or more tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable media of claim 12 , wherein the causing the at least some display pixels of the first set of the rows of display pixels to be driven in the first monotonically increasing order during the first frame or subframe comprises generating image data for a first micro-light emitting diode (LED) driver of the electronic display according to the first monotonically increasing order for the first frame or subframe, and wherein the causing the at least some display pixels of the first set of the rows of display pixels to be driven in the second monotonically decreasing order during the second frame or subframe comprises generating second image data for the first micro-LED driver of the electronic display according to the second monotonically decreasing order for the second frame or subframe.

15. An electronic display comprising:

a plurality of local passive matrices arranged in rows and columns, wherein each local passive matrix comprises a plurality of rows of light emitting diode display pixels;

a plurality of micro-light emitting diode (LED) drivers configured to drive respective local passive matrices of the plurality of local passive matrices one row at a time based on a first monotonically from a top row to a bottom row of the plurality of rows of display pixels of the local passive matrix increasing order and a second monotonically from the bottom row to the top row of the plurality of rows of display pixels of the local passive matrix decreasing order, wherein a micro-LED driver of the plurality of micro-light emitting diode (LED) drivers comprises row selection circuitry to programmably select which row to drive.

16. The electronic display of claim 15 , wherein the micro-LED driver of the plurality of micro-LED drivers is configured to receive image data comprising an indication of the row to drive based on the first monotonically increasing order or the second monotonically decreasing order, and wherein the micro-LED driver causes the micro-LED driver to select that row using the row selection circuitry.

17. The electronic display of claim 16 , wherein the row selection circuitry of the micro-LED driver comprises:

decoder circuitry configured to decode the indication of the row to drive to generate selection signals; and

switches configured to be controlled by the selection signals.

18. The electronic display of claim 17 , wherein the decoder circuitry is configured to generate the selection signal to cause the switches to connect a cathode of the row to drive to a first voltage and cathodes of other rows to a second voltage higher than the first voltage.

19. An electronic device comprising:

processing circuitry configured to produce configuration data for display on an electronic display, wherein the configuration data specifies a first monotonically increasing order from a top row to a bottom row of a first set of rows of light emitting diode display pixels to be illuminated and pixel data for the display pixels of the first set of rows and a second monotonically decreasing order from a bottom row to a top row of a second set of rows of light emitting diode display pixels to be illuminated and pixel data for the display pixels of the second set of rows, wherein the first order is different from the second order; and

the electronic display comprising a plurality of micro-light emitting diode (LED) drivers configured to receive the pixel data, select the row specified by the configuration data, and drive the display pixels of the row using the pixel data of the configuration data.

20. The electronic device of claim 19 , wherein the processing circuitry is configured to produce sets of image data specifying different rows in an order that varies from one frame to another frame or one subframe to another subframe.

21. The electronic device of claim 19 , wherein the processing circuitry is configured to generate sets of configuration data for the plurality of micro-LED drivers, wherein the sets of configuration data specify different rows in orders that vary from a first micro-LED driver of the plurality of micro-LED drivers to a second micro-LED driver of the plurality of micro-LED drivers.

22. A method comprising:

driving rows of light emitting diode display pixels of a first local passive matrix of an electronic display in a first monotonically from a top row to a bottom row of the first local passive matrix increasing order during a first frame or subframe; and

driving the rows of display pixels of the first local passive matrix in a second monotonically from the bottom row to the top row of the first local passive matrix decreasing order during a second frame or subframe or driving rows of a second local passive matrix of the electronic display in the second monotonically decreasing order from a bottom row to a top row of the second local passive matrix during the first frame or subframe, wherein the second order is different from the first order.

23. The method of claim 22 , comprising driving the rows of the display pixels of the first local passive matrix in a third order during a third frame or subframe, wherein the third order is different from the first monotonically increasing order and the second monotonically decreasing order.

24. The method of claim 23 , wherein the third order comprises a row order that alternates rows, wherein two adjacent rows are not driven in sequence.

Assignments (1)
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Jul 25, 2023
From: RIM, SEUNG B; LU, XIANG; FARROKH BAROUGHI, MAHDI; BAE, HOPIL; LI, HAITAO; AZIZI, YASER
To: APPLE INC.
Reel/Frame 064371/0966 →
Continuity (2)
Provisional Application 63398191 · Aug 15, 2022
Related Publication 20240054936A1 · Feb 15, 2024
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