The Future of Image Sensors, John McCarten
John McCarten presented a talk as part of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) Rochester NY chapter seminar series on 22 Jan. 2025.
John McCarten studied Physics at Cornell University and currently works for L3Harris. Since 2001, John’s focus has been on image sensors and cameras. He has worked with semiconductor foundries on four continents. He has over 30 patents and has been the technical lead on development projects that have brought in over a billion dollars in sales.
00:00 - Introduction
00:45 - Future of Image Sensors
50:22 - Discussion
I enjoyed listening to it - was an an interesting review-preview combo. Also liked the multiple ISW blog mentions!
ReplyDeleteI finally got around to listening to this talk. I have to say it was very disappointing to me. You can always tell when someone is not an expert when they get the small details very wrong. And that happens often in this talk. So, from from 30,000ft it could be an interesting talk, but once you are closer to ground truth the deviation from reality grows quickly. For example, when my '93 "dinosaur" paper got mentioned, the speaker pointed to figure 10 and said this was an 8T pixel (true) that used a virtual phase to transfer charge (not correct). It is a resampling pixel, now called Skipper-in-CMOS, where resampling with a floating gate is used to beat-down read noise effects on SNR. Later he goes on to talk about Noble's 3T pixel from’ 68 correctly (except blaming the performance on just the fab), but then somehow skips to the late 90's to talk about Kodak doing CMOS image sensors. (OK, his resume says he started at Kodak at 2001 so he missed the JPL collaboration and the subsequent Photobit collaboration.) He skipped Fig 2 in the Dinosaur paper, too bad, because that is where the intra-pixel charge transfer in a CMOS image sensor is disclosed, and which led to JPL transferring CMOS image sensor technology to Kodak. That collaboration led to a low voltage PPD by '95 thanks to Kodak re-engineering the PPD design, critical for low power CMOS integration. There are other significant errors, some misleading, like claiming you need big capacitors to yield low read noise (true only downstream) so listener beware. Pointing to deep trenches and claiming they were full (thru-wafer) trenches was also odd. I think the potentially libellous story hinting that Gpixel possibly stole a Kodak design was amusing. The evidence presented was that Gpixel was manufacturing in the same fab, and had the same pixel pitch as Kodak device. I think one of the smartest things a startup can do is make a pin-for-pin and optics-compatible device that has better performance specifications. And, given that the founder of Gpixel came from Albert Theuwissen's lab at Delft (as a PhD) suggests he knew a lot about image sensors and had no need to steal anything from Kodak. There were a lot of great engineers at Kodak, of course, creating some pioneering patents. Tom Lee and Mike Guidash are two examples that come to mind. Talking to image sensor non-experts from 30,000ft is generally good and laudable, but just know when it comes to the details in this talk, it is a little like Chat GPT hallucinating a bit.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, lots of fake news in the video; the 3.2um Gpixel sensor did/does not even come out of that said Italian Fab.
DeleteHowever, nor did the founder of Gpixel learn the ropes in the image sensor world only at Delft, but also at CMOSIS, whose team cleverly "copied" the 5.5 um pixel size "from" Kodak's CCD lineup. That probably had more to do with easier market adoption than "stealing" a pixel size idea ;)
Totally agree with you!
DeleteYou know, I thought this guy was getting a bunch of things wrong. Thanks for confirming and pointing some of them out.
DeleteGlad to see someone state in public that ChatGPT hallucinates.
DeleteI always thought of Gpixel as the "Gangster" pixel - that would have explained to stealing idea in that presentation.
ReplyDeleteGreat job Gpixel at being clever!
I like to jokingly tell people the G in Gpixel is coming from my name, even though the company was started almost a decade before I started working with them. But I like this "Gangster pixel" idea even better, so I hope Anonymous doesn't mind if I adopt it!
ReplyDelete