TFT LCD LCD interface type comparison

At present, there are several mainstream interface methods of TFT LCD display: MCU interface, RGB interface, SPI interface, MIPI interface, QSPI interface, LVDS interface.

There are more applications are MCU interface and RGB interface and SPI interface, mainly the following differences:

MCU interface: will decode commands, timing generator to generate timing signals, drive COM and SEG drive.

RGB interface: When writing LCD register settings, there is no difference with the MCU interface. The difference is only in how the image is written.

SPI interface: SPI (Serial Peripheral Interfacce), serial peripheral interface, is a synchronous serial data transmission standard proposed by MOTOROLA.

The SPI interface is often referred to as a 4-wire serial bus, or it can also be a 3-wire SPI interface, which works in a master/slave mode, and the data transfer process is initialized by the master.

SPI CLK, SCLK: Serial clock, used for synchronous data transfer, output by the host

CS: Chip select line, active low, output by the host

MOSI: master output, slave input data line

MISO: Master input, slave output data line

There is no so-called best or worst between interfaces, only suitable and unsuitable applications for the product; Therefore, we organize the data to provide the following table, for the various interfaces introduced in this article, to provide a multi-faceted advantages and disadvantages analysis, so that you can analyze and compare to find out the most suitable display interface for your products.

TFT display interface type	resolution	transmission speed	pin count	noise	power consumption	transmission distance,	cost
Microcontroller 8080/6800	medium	Low	More	medium	Low	short	Low
RGB 16/18/24	medium	fast	more	worst	high	short	low
SPI	Low	Low	Less	Medium	Low	Short	Low
I²C	Low	Low	Less	Medium	Low	short	Low
Serial RGB 6/8	medium	fast	Less	worst	high	short	Low
LVDS	high	fast	Less	best	Low	long	high
MIPI	high	Fastest	Less	best	Low	short	medium