alex-a-soto

E-readers are vertically integrated devices: the hardware, software, UI, and refresh behavior are all tailored around reading. E-ink tablets like reMarkable are similar, but optimized around writing and annotation.

A traditional monitor is much more general-purpose, so it doesn't get the same kind of end-to-end optimization for the display medium. I think there's room for an in-between category: a more interactive e-ink device where both the hardware and software are designed around the strengths and limits of the panel.

There's some related work happening in this direction:

The E Ink material itself is long-lived, the main stress is on the driving electronics and waveform behavior during refreshes. Our approach doesn't add extra refresh cycles, the display starts responding sooner, which improves perceived speed without adding extra refreshes.

So far, fast refresh hasn't been the dominant failure mode in our testing. Physical stress, bending, pressure, heat, and moisture are much larger risks.

On eye strain: E Ink is reflective and bistable, so a static image doesn't require continuously emitted light. Fast updates can still produce artifacts like flashing, dithering, or ghosting, but that's a different issue from a display that continuously flickers.

So I'd say this addresses an important part of the problem, though comfort will vary by person.

Also I recommend checking out the following resources:

Yes, that’s definitely something we want to work toward. As the community grows, we hope to tackle these kinds of optimizations together.

> A high power SIMD/NEON arm64 probably could do the job, but I think the Spartan6 is a good choice as well and has more obvious and straightforward parallelism

Yes, precisely for the reasons you stated. We also talk more about it below: