Display driver

This article is about graphics hardware interfacing to a display device. For software interfacing to a display device, see Device driver.

In Electronics/computer hardware a display driver is usually a semiconductor integrated circuit (but may alternatively comprise a state machine made of discrete logic and other components) which provides an interface function between a microprocessor, microcontroller, ASIC or general-purpose peripheral interface and a particular type of display device, e.g. LCD, LED, OLED, ePaper, CRT, Vacuum fluorescent or Nixie.

The display driver will typically accept commands and data using an industry-standard general-purpose serial or parallel interface, such as TTL, CMOS, RS232, SPI, I2C, etc. and generate signals with suitable voltage, current, timing and demultiplexing to make the display show the desired text or image.

The display driver may itself be an application-specific microcontroller and may incorporate RAM, Flash memory, EEPROM and/or ROM. Fixed ROM may contain firmware and display fonts.

A notable example of a display driver IC is the Hitachi HD44780 LCD controller.

See also