Using fast (or partial) updates with e-paper displays can greatly improve the user experience. These updates reduce the time required to update a display, opening up new application areas to designers. In particular, for applications where only a small part of the display needs to change regularly, implementing partial updates can be very beneficial.

Both global updates (also referred to as full update or global refresh) and fast/partial updates (or local update or fast refresh) are supported by Pervasive Displays. A global update will impact every pixel on the display, while a fast update only impacts the pixels that need to change, in order to display the new image. With a fast update, the full image is sent to the driver IC, which carries out the image data comparison. A partial update requires an area (window) to be defined and the system side sends just the image data specific to that area, but uses the same driving waveform to carry out the update.

Per our experience, the fast update provides the better optical quality than partial update which is also our highly recommendation.