 So we're here with our Rohini fight. How are you? I'm Matt Gerber, the CEO for Rohini. So what are we looking at here? So what you're seeing here is what looks like a little tiny grain of sand that's actually a micro LED. So you've seen and heard advertisements and press around micro and mini LED TVs and TV back lights. And what we've got here is the actual micro LED component itself. So you work in the micro LED business. We do. Which is like the big hype, right? Everybody's talking about the next thing is micro LED. It's the thing right now and we have a suite of technologies that allows designers to create impossible products using these very, very tiny components. So what do we see here? So what you can see here is this is actually a picture of that micro LED that's on this card, but it's under a magnifier. You can see the LED itself and you can see the anode and cathode where the electricity passes through it. So people read about these things and they see the actual products, but they don't get to see these tiny little components that make up this process. And then you'd want to not just have one, you want to put them together and like make big displays? That's right. The whole key to enabling these displays and these other products that you're going to see here is taking these really, really tiny devices and placing a lot of them in a small space at a very high rate of speed and very accurately. And we figured out a way to do that and in figuring out a way to do that we've enabled all of these new innovative products. So you have a bunch of demos here? We do. Let's take you over. And this is for you. Thanks. Hang on to that. So these are great examples of what the technology is capable of enabling. And you can see when you take a lot of these mini LEDs, micro LEDs and you put them in a small space, you can create really innovative lighting products. But you can also create products that are animated and you see motion because you can address each one of these. It's an individual electrical component and you can address it one individually and so you can create motion and movement and they're also flexible. So this is mostly about lighting? No. This area? This area is just a good example of what the technology enables like this. This is actually flexible light thread. So what you see here is actually flexible light thread and you can see the thread is going through the middle and the fabric. And those are mini LEDs on what's essentially very, very thin and flexible substrate. So what would be the use for putting in the micro LEDs in this fashion there? At some point you could see maybe one day you and I will be wearing clothing that we can illuminate with signage or signals. So when people talk about smart clothing there will be micro LEDs on them? Micro LEDs, absolutely. How soon? Probably in the next five years, I guess. And what are we taking in here? So that's just an example of a display backlight. So this is just an example of a display backlight and you can see this is a very thin, very flexible substrate and it would sit behind an LCD. And each one of those mini LEDs is addressable individually. So it allows you to create an LCD display that's thinner, brighter and has better contrast ratio than a standard LCD. So the business of a micro LED could be for LCD backlights? It could be. It's for multiple things. Let me show you some of the things that are very broad applications of this technology and some of the things that our technology enables. So this is a joint venture or products from a joint venture that we have with Magna. Magna is a very large automotive company and you can see examples of the application of these technologies to things like tail lights and automated displays in automotive applications. Alright, so what is this display here? This is an example of what a curved surface emitter might look like and this should be applicable to any surface you'd want to light up in a vehicle. You could use that kind of a surface in a tail light as an example or you could use it in front of a vehicle in a grill for branding purposes. This is the tail light. This is an example of a tail light. This is also another example of a tail light. Does it make it possible to have ultra bright tail lights brighter than the other tech? Several benefits. It's thinner, it's brighter, and it's more power efficient than what's out there today. And because it's flexible and you can animate, you can make the design much, much more interesting. As you can see here, you can't do that with an ordinary tail light whereas when you see those kinds of designs, you can do that with a micro mini LED based tail light. So it's important for safety. Tim, can you turn this off for a while? Sure. So this is another example of a tail light assembly? Whoa, that's bright. Dynamic lighting. Very bright. This way you're sure nobody's going to re-end your car? Yes, but you can also make it unique so they know that it's your car. Nice, so you can make all kinds of designs. That's right. So how far is that in the future? Is your technology shipping in some of these kind of products? We're currently quoting these products to different customers and we're building up demos right now for show to the upper management at the OEMs. All right. And you have more demos this way? I'm going to show you these are products from Lumi. Lumi is another joint venture between Rukini and a company called Koja. And Lumi's focus is on keyboard backlights. So these are notebook computer keyboard backlights as well as logos for things like notebooks and tablets. These are examples of keyboard backlights. And what's innovative about these is you can see these are extremely thin and each micro mini LED is addressable. And so this technology allows a designer to do things with a keyboard that couldn't previously be done. If you move over to the left here you can see this is a great example where you can see each of these keys. The key would be sitting above each of these LEDs. If you wanted different keys, different colors, if you wanted your keyboard to automate, if you wanted your keyboard to message you, this is capable of doing that. You can't do that with today's technology. And you can see how thin the actual membrane is that these mini LEDs are mounted on. So individually addressable, the other ones are not on the market? Let me introduce you to Kevin. Kevin is the CEO of the Lumi Joint Venture. So how about these speakers right there? What do you do with these? With these samples what we're showing you show is the indirect lighting or the loop lighting. In excellent form what we can do is with this technology we can implement this technology in many different shapes and forms. You can have the curvatures, or you can have the bright enough light that hits onto the table that you see indirectly. Or you can have the regular white backlight on the RGB light, RGB and illuminated backlight on the keyboard. Alright, so you have another piece for this. We have one more JV's product that we want to show you. So this is our most recent joint venture. It's with BOE. BOE is one of the largest display manufacturers. And we formed this joint venture about a year ago and we formally announced that it's now up and running last week. And what you see here, we have two firsts that you see here. So let's change them right there. What are we looking at here? So we have two firsts that you're seeing here. These are video wall components. These are video wall modules. And the first here is these are video wall modules on glass. So there's a lot of publicity at CES this year on direct emission video walls. What you see here are direct emission video walls on glass, which allows for the technology to be produced for the masses. So we have a much more efficient way of manufacturing this technology in that the LEDs are placed directly on glass. So this is a pretty big size. How big does it get? So these are modules and you can theoretically make as big a TV as you want. We can scale these from a single module like you see over there to as big as that back paneling. So let's check this one out over there. So this micro LED module. So what's the potential pixel density or resolutions and all that stuff? So let me also introduce you to Pei-Lan. Pei-Lan is the CEO of the BOE Pixie adventure. So actually this module is our 0.9 inch pitch. 0.9 millimeter pitch. The Mini-RD module. So we assembled this module to the big size like something like this. And this one is a glass base. So you know, BOE is the biggest LCD display maker in all of the world. So our expertise we can build many devices on the glass. So this one is our first demo for the 0.9 inch, 0.9 millimeter pitch. So this means this could be for digital signage or for, it's not for home TV use. Eventually it will be for home TV use, yes. For home TV you would need higher pixel density or? In the future, yes. So that's also on the roadmap? Unless you want a really, really big TV in your house. Oh yeah. How big? No limit? No limit. 200 inch, 8K? Yeah, 8K for maybe 210, something like this. Right, so you sit way back and then, how's it going to be the contrast? The contrast, the current is 1,500. So in the future maybe we can achieve to the 5,000. 5,000. So that means the blacks are totally black, but how about the? You mean the contrast ratio, right? Yeah. The contrast ratio should be maybe a million to one. Million to one? Million at least. Yeah. I mean the brightness we can achieve to the 5,000. All right. So Pixie, what's the idea about the name Pixie? We like it. It's actually a little bit of a plan words in that because it is a video wall or LCD application, you can think about things like pixel and those little LEDs we sprinkle pixie dust, the magic that helps create these really innovative products. So we like it. We think it's a great name for the JV. Nice. So potentially micro LEDs is going to be a big part of the future of TV market? I think they're going to be a big part of the picture of any consumer electronics product because they really enable these products. When you look at the differences between traditional packaged LEDs and many in micro LEDs, they're significantly smaller in size. They consume less power. And by putting more mini or micro LEDs in the same amount of space, you can create a much brighter product. So it really enables a completely new generation of products. All right. So Rohini is a... Can we turn this one on? Hold on. Yeah. All right. So there's another demo coming up right here. So Rohini is based in Idaho. So Rohini is an interesting company in that we're a very small group of non-conformist, crazy, innovative engineers in a place called Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which isn't known to be a mecca of high tech. But we really like it there because it's a quiet place and it allows us to do what we do best, which is really think about problems. We love to solve problems that people say are impossible to solve. And the reason we focus on mini and micro LEDs is our founders about eight years ago saw these components and the feedback that they got from the industry was the components are too small and too difficult to place accurately. And they realized if we could find a way to take those components, place them accurately at a high rate of speed, we could allow designers to create products like this and completely change the game when it came to building products with lighting. So how do you do this pick and placing? So you have some very strange technology, it's very small. Part of our secret sauce and we've got about a hundred patents that cover everything from placing these components through the actual products themselves. But the summary of how we do it is we take these individual mini or micro LEDs and we place them very accurately at a very high rate of speed. And that's what enables us to build these products economically. So does it have to do with what's called mass transfer or is it different? So we use a different process. The thing about what we build because we're building lighting products or we're building video components where you need to know that every single pixel works, every single die works, we actually place each and every die individually but we do it at a very high rate of speed. And that allows us to do two things. We know that the die we place is good and we know that the die we place has been placed accurately and works. Because as you can see with these products, if you're building a keyboard backlight you can't have a single die that's out. A lot of these mass transfer processes, they assume you're going to get fallout and so they design around a certain amount of fallout. You can get away with that if you're transferring millions of pixels. You can't get away with that with this kind of a product. So there's some kind of robot somewhere that takes every LEDs and puts them in? Yes, there is. And you can put millions of them on the display? Yes, you can. And you already have it working? We do. We actually have six lines, high speed lines in operation in various places around the world. Obviously some of them are at these joint ventures. We've got a line in Detroit. We've got a line in Wujiang, China. And we've got a line in Beijing. But for this to take over the whole market you need to be able to... There needs to be so much scale. That's right. You want to do billions per day of pixels. We think we can do that from a couple of different perspectives. One is when you look at the partners we have here with us today we've got the biggest players in their respective industries. So Koja, our partner in Lumi, is the largest supplier of keyboard memory and switches. So perfect partner for keyboard backlights and logos. Magna is a global company with, I think, 180,000 employees. One of the leaders in Automotive. And so we've got the right partner in Automotive. And BOE, as a largest display company, is the right partner to scale with Automotive. And on the equipment side we've partnered with one of the leading providers of semiconductor placement equipment to build the robot. So we're positioned today to scale the business. And there's no limit to how quickly and how much we can scale at this point. How much of this technology do you manufacture yourself? Or how much of it is just licensing to other companies to... They make it. So this is where your point is very valid. The market is moving now and we knew we needed to scale quickly. So the partners you see here today with BOE, Magna, and Koja with these joint ventures, they help scale by building products and they help scale by taking products to market. And then our machine manufacturing partner actually builds the machinery that these joint ventures use. So Rohini is a company, like I mentioned to you before, we're innovators and a bunch of creative engineers and so we're the core inventors and the core enablers. But we've partnered with these companies to help take the technology to market as quickly as possible. And here's another BOE Pixel Pixie demo. Yes. Is it the backlight? So what do we see here? So this is also a first in that this is a 75 inch LCD. Okay. A KTV with a mini LED backlight with 10,000 dimming zones. So you see an extremely crisp picture. Contrast ratios are very high and it's also very bright. 10,000 dimming zones. So this is micro LED or mini LED? This is a mini LED backlight. So because I saw some interesting that BOE is doing also with high sense the dual layer. But that's maybe one argument could be that doing mini LED or micro LED is brighter? Absolutely, yes. Absolutely. Yes. So actually, you know very well about the BOE product, right? So that is the dual panel. So the two panel. But the brand is, compared with our mini LED backlight, the brand is very poor. But it's a different product. Different, you know, the product. Different application, yes. Different application. Different product. Different product. But the future, we think the mini LED backlight or maybe in the future micro LED backlight will be the chance. Absolutely, yes. Absolutely. So 10,000 is a lot. So that means the blacks are mostly totally black? It does, yes. Yes. It's a beautiful picture. And how would you say it compares with OLED? Actually, we think the mechanism is the same. So we can shut down the LED totally. Right? We can ship the cube back. So you know the, compared with the ORED, the mini LED has very higher reliability than the ORED. How about, you know, there's like issues on OLED with like burn in, something like that. Is there any chance that this might have something similar or it's just going to work forever? Forever, yes. It's not going to have this kind of problem. Like the LEDs don't stop working. They all just continue forever. Yeah. The beauty of this technology is all of the componentry is proven. So the LEDs themselves, the substrates, there's no new materials. There's no new substantially different architectures here. We're putting together components in a way that haven't been put together before, which is what makes this unique. And because we're using established componentry, it's extremely reliable. So is this the cutting edge of mini LEDs? Yes. Is there no like more mini LED density in the market or demonstration or anything? I think right now what you're looking at is the first in that this does have 10,000 dimming zones. And that's a first for a mini LED backlit LCD. We're going to continue to innovate and you will see additional innovations in the future, which may mean higher densities for dimming zones, higher densities for mini LEDs, greater dimming zones. We continue to push the technology because we think it has a lot of headroom. So it sounds awesome to have an 8K 75 inch with a 10,000 mini LED. It sounds awesome. And how bright does it get? Does it talk about how many nits? So actually we can achieve to the 2,000 nits. 2,000 nits? Yes. Is there quantum dots on this? No. Also? You can, right? We can, yes. It's not on this sample, but it could be the ultimate TV right there on the market. We think so. How soon could it be mass production? Is it 2020? Yes. We're talking to customers now at this point. So the JV has just launched, formally launched a couple of weeks ago, and we're engaged with quite a few customers right now. So our goal is to bring it to market as quickly as possible. So the whole system and the pick and play system and everything is reliable to mass produce these? Yes. The same system that will be used to build these products is already in production at Lumi. So Lumi is shipping mass production high volume product to customers right now. How about the price? Is it going to add a lot of price to have this so many million LEDs behind here? Can you talk about that? So we don't set the prices. The actual OEM would set the prices. We think that for what the technology delivers, it'll be a very compelling offer. Because I think when, for example, LG talks about their AK 88 inch, they say something like 30 or 40 thousand dollars. So hopefully you can bring something cheaper. I think it'll be a little less than that. That'd be nice. So if we go into micro LEDs on something like this, how many zones could it be? Could you have like up to like millions zones or something? Theoretically you could. I think at some point you would see a transition from an LCD with a mini LED backlight to a direct emission panel. Because if you got the densities high enough, the economics would dictate moving to a direct emission display like the one behind you. So I think there is an inflection point in the technology. We're a ways away from that inflection point at this point. So there's more high pixel density on the LCD technology. There's more color saturation compared to this. How would you compare the state of the art right now? I would defer to if I'm not sure you want to comment on it. That makes sense. The brightness is not as high or how high does it get? You can get much brighter on the direct emission panel than you can on an LCD. In LCD there's a loss as the light is traveling through the panel versus the direct emission where you're collecting directly from the LED. The offset is you have to put a lot of pixels very close together for that. Versus an LCD, the question about mini versus micro on an LCD is a little bit of a misnomer because the pixel density at 10,000 ohms, you're still 7 million years apart. And that's a mini LED. You don't necessarily need to go to a micro LED to get much closer. So the benefit's not quite there. The goal there is to get thinner and to get a high brightness that's very thin. With the direct emission product you get very, very bright because you don't have that layer that's absorbing some of the light in between. And so there's a lot to be said for getting much brighter in that case. So you have all the advantage of the contrast, very, very bright. Blacks are true black because you're turning it all the way off. But you have the offshoot of it's more challenging to manufacture because you have to put a lot of pixels very, very close together in order to have that truly finite image that you're looking at. So maybe a state of the art LCD right now, they talk about 2,000, 3,000 nits, maybe 4,000 something like that, right? How bright do you think this could get? It could be more. It could be a lot more. A lot more. Because if theoretically we've talked about 6,000 to 10,000 nits but at some point you create so much heat that it becomes impractical. What you have to realize is that if you have an LCD that's generating 4,000 nits through the LCD layer, pretty significant 60, 80% of that light is from the backlight already being absorbed, blocked by the LCD. So the backlight is generating a lot more than that and that's the LEDs themselves. So you could get much brighter but I don't know if you'd want to look at it because it becomes the eye strain problem. Yeah, you could get super bright but I don't know if you really want to watch it. So how many LEDs do you need to be allowed to call it mini-LED? This is 10,000, it sounds like a lot but I guess some companies have less and they still call it mini-LED? Yeah, at least from Rohini's perspective the difference between mini-LEDs and micro-LEDs really revolves for us around the size of the LED itself. Typically anything above 50 micron square up to about 3 to 500 micron square we'd call a mini-LED and anything 50 micron square and under we would call a micro-LED. And the other big difference you see is typically mini-LEDs will have a substrate whereas as the LEDs get smaller and smaller it doesn't make sense to have a substrate so you'll see those micro-LEDs will typically be an epitaxial layer only, which is the emitter layer. So a very different architecture for the LEDs as well between mini and micro. That's the difference in our opinion. So when we talk about BOE as the largest LCD capacity in the world, it's millions and millions of displays and micro mini-LED backlights is going to be able to keep up with the demand. And there's enough LEDs in the world, I don't know, how does it get made? It's a great thing for the LED business because it's one of the next big applications they're looking at. So there'll be many, trillions of LEDs coming out, these kinds of products. And 2020, we can see this one maybe in 2020, maybe. Like I said, we're talking to customers now so customer demand will really dictate when we'll see the actual products in the market but we'd like to see that happen as soon as possible. It's possible? I can ask, how do competitors potentially do mini-LED? Is it a completely different way than this? I really don't have much insight on how they're doing things. We know how we're doing them and we think we've got a process that's very efficient and very effective. Alright, so cool. So looking forward to more of these displays. Thanks. Thanks for stopping by.