Improvements in silicon foundry processes have made possible high-resolution, light-efficient backplanes capable of driving electro-optic modulators with higher voltage signals. The higher voltage provides the excitation to achieve sub-millisecond response times with a wave of phase modulation when used with dual-frequency nematic liquid crystals. By combining dual-frequency phase modulators with high-voltage silicon backplanes, compact spatial light modulators become available for applications that need fast, high-throughput modulators such as optical signal processing, adaptive wavefront correction, optical signal routing or beamsteering, and active diffractive optics.