Rutger Thijssen | Applied Materials: What exactly does the '$100 for 100 million' waveguide target include, and when could it actually arrive?
16:49 - 18:18
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Summary of the clip:
What exactly does the '$100 for 100 million' waveguide target include, and when could it actually arrive?
The clip answers the $100-for-100-million question by defining the bundle. As posed by Jason at SVA last year, chromic and lenses were not included. What is included is a waveguide and a light engine, plus, it is guessed, some cover glass. That means the $100 target is not a complete pair of display glasses; it is a display-module and waveguide package, leaving other optical elements outside the number.
The timing answer is that $100 is meant to enable the next 100 million, not the next five million or one million, so you must wait for 100 million. Crucially, that is 100 million display glasses, not 100 million smart glasses. If display glasses are only about 10% of smart glasses, the wait is for one billion smart glasses. The answer rules out 2027, 2028, and 2030.
The arithmetic is framed around population. There are only seven billion people on Earth, so getting to 100 million display glasses by having one out of seven wearing smart glasses means waiting a little bit. In the meantime, over the next decades, the price point might be a little bit different. The 100-for-100-million target is called a good target, but the clip cuts off before saying what it is not for.
In this short video, you can learn:
* The $100-for-100-million package is described as a waveguide and light engine, with cover glass guessed, but chromic and lenses were not included.
* The $100 target is for the next 100 million display glasses, not smart glasses; if display glasses are 10% of smart glasses, it implies one billion smart glasses.
* The answer rules out 2027, 2028 and 2030 and says next decades may have a different price point.
📋 **Clip Abstract** The clip clarifies that the $100-for-100-million target covers a waveguide and light engine, with cover glass guessed, but not chromic or lenses. It argues the target requires 100 million display glasses—and perhaps one billion smart glasses—so the timing is not 2027, 2028 or 2030, and the price point may differ over the next decades.
About the speaker:
* Speaker: Rutger Thijssen
* Company: Applied Materials
* Event: Eindhoven 2026
* Location: High Tech Campus, Eindhoven
#WaveguideLightEngine, #CoverGlass, #DisplayGlasses, #ChromicLenses, #SmartGlasses, #ARDisplays
This is a highlight of the presentation:
Turning Breakthroughs into Reality: AI Glasses from First Etched Device to High-Volume Manufacturing
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02:34 - 03:40
Why does sticking an off-the-shelf waveguide and light engine together fail, and what must instead be co-designed as one system?
Why does sticking an off-the-shelf waveguide and light engine together fail, and what must instead be co-designed as one system?
Double-tap, long press or a little button somewhere is not the way to go. The core element is an integrated ambient system: the light engine plus the waveguide stack. In the exploded view, the waveguide stack is shown and the light engine is buried in the frame, because the focus is stronger on the waveguide stack side. Buying a waveguide and a light engine off the shelf and sticking them together fails quite badly.
The waveguide alone is not enough. Prescription lenses must be integrated. If the solution is not prescription, it becomes push-pull. The talk also responds to Bernard's question to Satoshi: a large fraction of the glasses sold will have to include some kind of chromic solution to actively manage dimming. That adds another layer to the integrated ambient system rather than a standalone optical component.
How do we engineer this, and how does the industry engineer this together? That is one of the big questions and one of the big things seen. The failure mode is not incidental: it follows from treating waveguide and light engine as separate purchases. The integrated ambient system — light engine plus waveguide stack, with prescription and chromic dimming — has to be engineered as one. That is the argument against off-the-shelf sticking together.
In this short video, you can learn:
* An integrated ambient system combines the light engine and the waveguide stack, and off-the-shelf assembly of those separate parts fails badly.
* The waveguide alone is insufficient: prescription lenses must be integrated, or the solution becomes push-pull, and a chromic solution is needed to actively manage dimming.
* The industry must engineer the light engine, waveguide stack, prescription integration and chromic dimming together, not as separate bought components.
đź“‹ **Clip Abstract** The clip argues that smart glasses cannot rely on double-tap, long press or a little button, nor on buying a waveguide and light engine off the shelf and sticking them together. Instead, the core element is an integrated ambient system of light engine plus waveguide stack, with prescription lenses or push-pull, and a chromic solution for dimming, engineered together by the industry.
About the speaker:
* Speaker: Rutger Thijssen
* Company: Applied Materials
* Event: Eindhoven 2026
* Location: High Tech Campus, Eindhoven
#IntegratedAmbientSystem, #WaveguideStack, #ChromicDimming, #PrescriptionLensIntegration, #SmartGlasses, #WearableOptics
14:05 - 16:14
VLSI makes a lot of things the same; how do you fab hundreds of thousands of different waveguide SKUs in days?
VLSI makes a lot of things the same; how do you fab hundreds of thousands of different waveguide SKUs in days?
VLSI means making a lot of things the same, and the equipment supplier knows that model well. But no two people in the room wear the same glasses, so the fab must handle different SKUs and different shapes. The gratings might be the same, but the way the waveguide is cut differs between them. And delivery must happen four or five days after the customer buys the lenses, across hundreds of thousands of SKUs and shapes.
For this application the equipment maker's own model differs from standard semiconductor processing. It builds large but still smaller runs of equipment, depending on the customer, and those tools are copy exact or close to copy exact. The team is working hard on takt time, getting parts in and out of the factory in an acceptable time. That is first a customer requirement, and it also reduces the inventory load.
Three levers carry the load. Part of it is waveguide design: how things are laid out on the wafer to keep flexibility. Part of it is tooling, asking whether custom trays are needed for every possible shape or whether universal solutions exist. A big part is factory software management, knowing that the wafer in this slot, in this FOUP, position 12, has a suitable…
In this short video, you can learn:
* The audience test shows the scale problem: no two wearers share the same glasses, so the fab faces hundreds of thousands of different SKUs and shapes rather than one identical design.
* Tool runs for this application are large but smaller than standard semiconductor runs, and are copy exact or close to copy exact.
* Takt time is the constraint to attack, driven by a customer requirement to ship lenses four or five days after purchase and by the need to cut inventory load.
đź“‹ **Clip Abstract** The clip contrasts VLSI's identical-part economics with eyewear, where every user's glasses differ and waveguide cutting varies even when gratings are shared. It lays out the manufacturing response: wafer layout for flexibility, universal rather than shape-specific tooling, factory software tracking wafers and FOUP positions, and takt-time work to cut inventory while meeting a four-to-five-day delivery promise.
About the speaker:
* Speaker: Rutger Thijssen
* Company: Applied Materials
* Event: Eindhoven 2026
* Location: High Tech Campus, Eindhoven
#CopyExactTooling, #TaktTime, #FOUPSlotTracking, #WaferLayoutFlexibility, #ARWaveguideManufacturing, #SemiconductorEquipment
03:57 - 04:50
How do you spend a waveguide's brightness budget — rainbow, colour uniformity, or outdoor wearability — under 50 grams?
How do you spend a waveguide's brightness budget — rainbow, colour uniformity, or outdoor wearability — under 50 grams?
Open demos have been limited, but a return is planned at the SID conference in Santa Clara in November. The headline result is very good brightness — not because that level is the brightness anyone actually needs, but because brightness is an obvious KPI. Once you have that budget, you can spend it on the problems that matter: rainbow, the visibility of gratings, and colour uniformity.
It is a trade: give up some of that brightness and ask for really good colour uniformity, or decide the glasses must be absolutely outdoor wearable, pick the very bright option, and accept a slightly different trade-off. The brightness number is a currency, and every design decision — rainbow suppression, grating visibility, colour uniformity, outdoor visibility — is paid for out of the same budget.
All-day wearability frames the whole problem. The 50-gram number came up multiple times in the sessions, and it is seen as a pretty hard requirement. Part of meeting that requirement is how you manage the weight — which points at making a low-light waveguide. Weight management and light management are the same design conversation, and the brightness budget is where the trade-offs get made.
In this short video, you can learn:
* Brightness is an obvious KPI, not the brightness that is actually needed — it is a budget to spend on rainbow, grating visibility and colour uniformity.
* A designer can trade off some brightness for really good colour uniformity, or pick the very bright option for glasses that are absolutely outdoor wearable.
* All-day wearability and the 50-gram weight figure are treated as a pretty hard requirement, and managing that weight points toward making a low-light waveguide.
📋 **Clip Abstract** Open demos have been limited, with the next showing planned for SID in Santa Clara in November, where the focus is very good brightness as an obvious KPI. The real decisions sit in how that brightness budget is spent — rainbow, grating visibility, colour uniformity, outdoor wearability — against a 50-gram, all-day-wearable hard requirement that pushes designers toward a low-light waveguide.,
About the speaker:
* Speaker: Rutger Thijssen
* Company: Applied Materials
* Event: Eindhoven 2026
* Location: High Tech Campus, Eindhoven
#BrightnessBudget, #LowLightWaveguide, #ColorUniformity, #RainbowSuppression, #ARWaveguides, #AugmentedReality