Architecture and designs of display devices are described, where the display devices possesses high spatial resolution as well as high intensity resolution and may be readily used in various projection applications, storage and optical communications. According to one aspect of the present invention, a display device includes an array of image elements, each of the image elements further includes an array of sub-image elements. These sub-image elements are driven by PWM as in digital modulation. A portion of an image element area, namely some of the sub-image elements, is turned on, which has the same perceived effect of turning on an entire image element for a specific time. In addition, various designs of an image element or a sub-image element are described.