Micron 1.75um Pixel Reverse Engineering

For the first time Chipworks openly publishes poly and diffusion-level picture of Micron's 1.75um pixel:



This is the old pixel from MT9E001 8MP sensor. It mostly inherits the first generation 2.2um layout, just shrinked down a little. More recent Micron pixels are supposed to improve its symmetry.

ProMOS Plans CIS Production in Q4 2007

Digitimes: ProMOS plans to provide foundry service production in the fourth quarter at its first 12-inch fab (Fab 2) at Hsinchu, Taiwan, according to the company at an investors conference. The company plans for a capacity of 20,000 wafer starts per month for CMOS image sensor production from the fourth quarter of 2007.

From the article it's not clear whether this production relates to Toppan-licensed color filters or full image sensors.

Jova Image Sensor Lab Article

Vision Systems Design published an article about Jova Solutions' CMOS image-sensor and camera-module test station, the Image Sensor Lab ISL-1600, that provides a range of CMOS image-sensor interfaces and control, test, evaluation, and comparison capabilities and costs less than $5000.

Image Sensor Lab application software includes many of the common high-level characterization tests typically performed on image sensors during manufacturing or verification testing, like photoresponse uniformity, dead- and defective-pixel detection, Macbeth color analysis, and MTF/SFR image-sharpness measurements, dust and particle detection and luminance uniformity.

Another article by Toshi Hori, president of GEViCAM, gives a crash course on image sensor parameters interpretation. Quite simplified and incomplete, it might be of some use for those who new to image sensors.

More on ProMOS Plans

Taipei Times: ProMOS expects to start supplying CMOS sensors for customers on a contract basis in the first quarter of next year at the earliest, Ben Tseng, spokesman for PROMOS, said.

ProMOS plans to make CMOS sensors at an old 12-inch (300mm) plant in Hsinchu, Tseng said, joining bigger local rivals such as Powerchip in making products other than DRAM chips at less cost-competitive factories.

He declined to reveal the amount of additional investment needed to upgrade the facility to accommodate CMOS sensor production.

SMIC Not Worried about Toppan-ProMOS Deal

Digitimes: SMIC, Toppan's partner in JV that produces on-chip color filters and micro lenses for CMOS image sensors, has said that it is glad to see the Japan-based partner licensing its technologies to Taiwan's ProMOS.

SMIC maintained that its partnership with Toppan – the JV TSES in Shanghai – has been fruitful following the start of production in January 2006. ProMOS will in the future utilize Toppan's technologies for back-end production and services, SMIC added.

Toppan and SMIC announced in June 2004 that they would invest US$64 million to jointly set up TSES, with the former having a 70% stake and the latter 30%.

Toppan and ProMOS Sign License Agreement

JCN Network: ProMOS moves full speed to aquire sensor production skills. Under the license agreement, Toppan will provide ProMOS know-how for the ramp-up of ProMOS's color filters and microlens production line at the 300mm wafer image sensor production line in Taiwan.

The agreement will also enable Toppan to utilize ProMOS's production line for its production of color Filters used for 300mm wafer sized Image Sensors at ProMOS's established production line, and will also allow Toppan to supply the color resist to ProMOS.

In other words, ProMOS gets excellent color filter and microlens technology, while Toppan gets access to 300mm wafer lines, that it previously lacked. This is what's called mutual benefit.

Update: Digitimes writes that in addition to the technology license agreement, ProMOS and Toppan Printing will also extend the collaboration to a business partnership.

New Tower Pixel Offering

I was shown a flyer with recent Tower pixels developments:



The pixels are offered as IP for Tower CIS customers. The last 2.2um generation looks extremely good. With such pixels in hand fabless companies can effectevily compete with best sensors from Micron, Samsung and the likes. I'm eager to see the products based on these pixels.

Kodak Designs Sensor for Motorola Phones

SeekingAlpha: In today's conference call Kodak CEO Antonio Perez answers on image sensors business question:

Matt Troy - Citigroup:

Okay. Antonio, I know it is still early days in the wake of the CMOS announcement, but based on your initial conversations, I’d be interested in your thoughts -- where do you see the opportunity with that product as I turn the dial? Is it selling co-manufactured chips into handset makers, is it licensing it to other chip manufacturers, is it putting it into your own cameras? I know it is some combination thereof, but I’m just wondering where you see, at last in the next 12 to 36 months, the largest opportunity based on your conversations so far?

Antonio M. Perez:

I think the largest is in the handset. As you know, we have a close relationship with Motorola. We are working diligently to help them develop improved cell phones with our CMOS sensors. I am anxious to be able to announce, for them to announce something like that. We are working very hard to get it to market quickly. That is the best opportunity, not just with Motorola but our plan is to serve anybody that is in the digital capture market.

Having said that, we have one camera that is going to come with our CMOS sensors and we would like to see many more, and other people using our CMOS sensors, like today, some of our competitors, they use our CCD sensors already in their cameras, so we don’t see a reason why if we have the quality that we believe we do have and the differentiation that we believe we do have and the pixel technology and the imaging technology that we embed in those sensors, we should be able to get a good share of that market.

Our tentative goal that we have shared with investors so far is that I don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t get to $300 million by 2010. If we hit it, well, it could be a lot more than that but that is the number that we are planning to for this purpose.

Altasens Abandons "Tapered Reset" Technology?

Broadcast Newsroom (link 1, link 2): In a surprizing move Altasense announced a switch to regular 4T technology. The pixel sizes are 2.09um and 2.7um for different sensors in the family - a very good start for the company new to 4T pixel design. The sensors are made in IBM's process.

A5262-4T 5MP HD sensor is based on 2.09um pixel. It's designed for Hitachi’s Blue-Ray DVD/HD camcorder. It does 60fps at HD resolution and 30fps at 4.5MP resolution, both with 12b output. This is quite a unique combination for today's market. The sensor is at production ramp-up stage.

A337x-4T sensors are based on 2.7um pixel and offer 72fps speed of 1080p HD video stream at 12b resolution. The engineering samples are available now.

While transition to 4T is a very logical step for the company, it's a little bit sad to see that Altasens' pixel differentiation is lost.

Omnivision Uses Non-Linear Microlens Shift Technology

Yahoo: Omnivision's new OV7680 1/10" VGA sensor features a non-linear micro-lens shift technology. The technology reduces the distance between the sensor and the lens, so the height of the camera module can be just 2.5 mm. The sensor is based on 2.2um pixels.

Omnivision already started shipping volume production quantities of the sensor.