Mobileye IPO Values Company at $5.31B

Reuters: Mobileye's NYSE IPO on Aug. 1st values the vision-based ADAS company at about $5.31 billion, higher than planned. The company estimates that its products were installed in about 3.3M vehicles worldwide as of March 31, including BMW, Honda and Tesla Motors. By the end of 2014, it expects its technology to be available in 160 car models from 18 original equipment manufacturers worldwide.

Here is BMW TV story:

Imaging at Confab 2014

The Confab Conference held in June 2014 has few mentions about imaging. Subramani Kengeri, Global Foundry VP of Advanced Technology Architecture names 10 most important emerging applications, among them there are 5 imaging ones:

Novati presentation by its CEO David Anderson shows the company's BSI capability:

Movidius Announces its 2nd Gen Vision Processor

Marketwired: Movidius announces Myriad 2, the next generation of its vision processor unit (VPU) SoC. Compared to Myriad 1—which was introduced as part of Google’s Project Tango—the new chipset delivers 20x more processing efficiency in terms of computations per watt of power consumed. Myriad 2 comprises a larger and upgraded set of programmable processors as well as a new set of dedicated and configurable image and vision accelerators to power the next wave of computational cameras.

Its key features:

• Superior performance at ultra-low power: Myriad 2, implemented in TSMC 28HPM process, is capable of performance exceeding two trillion 16-bit operations per second while consuming an average of less than 500mW. It supports up to six full HD 60fps camera inputs simultaneously via 12 1.5Gbps MIPI lanes.
• Programmability: Myriad 2 is equipped with 12 programmable vision-specific vector processors to enable rapid innovation and to enable device manufacturers to differentiate using their proprietary software.
• Low latency processing: Given its highly parallelized data processing architecture and its new and highly efficient on-chip memory fabric, Myriad 2 can achieve high-performance processing with notably low latency. As an example, for the standard vision processing benchmark known as the Haar Cascade classification, Myriad 2 can calculate 50,000 multi-scale classifications per high-definition (HD) video frame in a mere seven milliseconds.
• Flexible usage for different applications: Myriad 2 operates either as a co-processor to the main application processor in a vision-enabled mobile device, or as a standalone processor in wearable or embedded applications.

TI Structured Light 3D Imaging Reference Kit

TI presents a reference design of structured light 3D camera based on its DLP projector:

Interview with Terry Gilton

Image Sensors Americas 2014 web site publishes an interview with Terry Gilton, Aptina VP of Advanced Technology. Few quotes:

Q: What are the major growth areas in the image sensor business in 2014/5?
A: Along with general market growth in the volume segments, there is a trend towards physically larger sensors to improve all around performance. While the pixel-count war is not dead, the top mobile OEMS have seen the light. Smaller pixels matter, but are being seen as enablers for unique features rather than just a way to use more power and memory, while larger pixels are getting the credit they deserve for image quality.

Q: Which advanced technologies do you think will have the greatest impact on the supply chain in the coming years?
A: Stacking of pure pixel arrays onto ASICS is going to be a very important change to the supply chain. Packaging of image sensors into camera modules is in an innovation phase now. Things like curved sensors will have an interesting impact on optical design, and could enable some changes in the module that will allow new technologies to flourish. Multi-chip solutions are going to become more popular, and advances in heat management are going to drive camera performance.

With pixel shrinks and the demand for greater performance, I believe that pixel level optics (color filters, micro lenses and pixel-scale light path engineering) is changing quickly. It used to be just spinning on some organics, but it is now much more complex and essential to the sensor's overall performance.

ISORG Presentation

ISORG published its presentation at Printed Electronics Show held in April 2014 in Berlin, Germany. Few slides talking about the company's plans and vision:

Amazon Fire Phone Teardown Confirms Omnivision Inside

EETimes: Amazon Fire Phone teardown confirms that Omnivision image sensors used for the "Dynamic Perspective" feature. Other than the sensors, the phone also integrates OV680 ISP. All cameras combined amount to more than 10% of the phone's cost:

2nd Session of 2014 Imaging Forum Announced

Albert Theuwissen announces that as the 1st session of 2014 Solid State Imaging Forum is almost sold out, the 2nd session registration opens. The 2nd session is scheduled for Dec. 15-16, 2014, same location.

Pelican Imaging 3D Viewer

Pelican Imaging publishes an on-line 3D viewer of the real pictures taken by its array camera. Users can change the amount of the blur based on the object distance and can see either a processed 2D picture or a depth map:

150MP HDR Sensor Thesis

Delft University publishes MSc thesis "The Design of a Stitched, High-dynamic Range CMOS Particle Sensor" by Jiaqi Zhu. The thesis presents a cooperative work with Caeleste. The DR extension is achieved by a dual-gain 6.5um pixel:

The sensor resolution is up to 150MP (12288 x 12288 pixel). No silicon results yet, but the tapeout was scheduled for May 2014.