Publication
GPU-Based Local-Dimming for Power Efficient Imaging
Jens Krüger; Michael Krause; Chihao Xu
In: Julie Dorsey (Hrsg.). Proceedings ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2012. ACM SiggraphAsia (SigAsia), November 28 - December 1, Singapore, Singapore, ACM, 2012.
Abstract
This paper describes a local dimming method for reducing the power
consumption of LCD monitors. Reducing this load is of ever growing
importance as it is becoming the dominant power consumer of
mobile computing. As a side effect, our method not only significantly
reduces the power consumption, but also improves visual
quality (see Figure 1). To implement our algorithm using the minimum
new hardware components, we propose utilizing the parallel
power of graphics processing units (GPUs) found in any of todays
PCs, notebooks, or mobile devices.
Our approach generates individual values of LED strings for backlighting
the LCD panel and an image for controlling the TFT-pixels.
For this purpose a specific local dimming algorithm called Sorted
Sector Covering (SSC), which considers the Edge-Lit structure of
LCD monitors, has been implemented on both the GPU and the
CPU. The procedure allows for high frame rates. We demonstrate
that the static contrast is increased, yielding better visual quality,
while the power consumption is significantly reduced.