[IDF] Lower power usage for notebook screens

One of the major power consumers inside a laptop is of course the screen and that's why Intel is actively developing methods to make laptop displays more energy efficient. On the IDF technology showcase there were a few demos of future technologies than can lessen the power usage of the screen considerably.

Very soon we can expect TFT screens that used LED's in stead of CCFL's for the backlight. When properly implemented there'll be no differences in image quality, but there's surely a big power difference. In a demo Intel measured 5109 mW for a regular CCFL lighted display and 4214 mW for the same display with LED backlights. The difference is almost 1 Watt.

Two other technologies that Intel is planning to use are P-States and DPST. The first technology lowers the refreshrate of the screen from 60 Hz to 40 Hz, but only when there are no moving images on the screen. DPST dimishes the light from the backlights in darker parts of the image on the screen. Again nice results for the power usage: in a demo with two identical laptops the one without the new technologies used 5109 mW for the backlight and 745 mW for the TFT-screen itself. With P-States and DPST enabled the other laptop used 3607 mW for the backlight and 639 mW for the display, resulting in a power decrease of more then 1.5 Watt. Together with LED backlights this can result in a power saving of more than 2 Watts.

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