Samsung to Manufacture Image Processors for Toshiba

Reuters: Toshiba plans to outsource fabrication of advanced system chips to Samsung and GlobalFoundries, where Samsung will likely handle low-cost fabrication of Toshiba's mainline image-processing chips.

News from EI 2011 - Part 3

Albert Theuwissen continues to share his impressions from Electronic Imaging 2011 conference. The concluding part talks mainly about Toshiba paper “Dark noise in a CMOS imager pixel with negative bias on transfer gate”, by Hirofumi Yamashita et al. The negative bias is said to greatly reduce hot pixels, but increase number of warm pixels. The solution is not too surprising - reduce electric field between Tx gate and floating diffusion.

More Details about Toshiba 14MP 1.4um-pixel BSI Sensor

Toshiba presents more details about its 14MP 1/2.3-inch BSI sensor, including its part number TCM5101CL and the block diagram. Toshiba announced the sensor over a year ago, but so far the details were quite sketchy.

The sensor has 8 LVDS lanes, something that only Omnivision offered in its recent 10MP sensor. Toshiba sensor can run at 1080p/60fps rate or at 15fps at full resolution.

Tessera Scales Down its Imaging and Optics Activity

EETimes: Tessera announced reorganization of its Imaging & Optics segment including a reduction of its Imaging & Optics employees that is anticipated to be up to 15% of the company's worldwide employee base.

Imaging & Optics revenues were $9.2M in Q4 and $37.3M for full year 2010. For Q1 2011 Imaging & Optics revenues are expected to be approximately $11M to $12M, out of that license fees revenues are expected to be approximately $6.5M to $7.0M and products and services revenues are expected to be approximately $4.5M to $5.0M. This compares to Imaging & Optics royalties and license fees revenues of $3.1M and products and services revenues of $5.4M in the Q1 2010, which totaled $8.5M for this segment.

I've received an email giving some background on the recent Tessera steps:

"This is in a series of events as Tessera withdraws from the segment:

1. Oct 28 - As a part of it's third quarter earnings release, Tessera Announces Withdraw from Wafer Level Camera Business

2. Nov 11 - Mike Bereziuk, EVP of Imaging and Optics. Leaves Company -

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Tessera-Announces-Executive-bw-3146267033.html?x=0&.v=2

3. Jan 24 - Bruce McWilliams (original CEO who started Imaging and Optics acquisitions and created division, later replaced by Hank Nothhaft) resigns from Tessera's board -

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Tessera-Announces-the-bw-4193890503.html?x=0&.v=1

4. Jan 27 - Tessera starts laying off employess in I&O. While "15% of Tessera worldwide base" is affected, if taken in just the percentage in I&O the total percentageis much higher just within the I&O group."

ON Semi to Acquire Cypress Image Sensor Business

Business Wire: ON Semiconductor and Cypress announced that a definitive agreement has been signed for ON Semiconductor to acquire the Image Sensor Business Unit (ISBU) from Cypress in an all cash transaction for approximately $31.4 million. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

“The acquisition of the Image Sensor Business Unit from Cypress will solidify our position as a leading supplier of CMOS Image Sensor products,” said Bob Klosterboer, SVP and GM of ON Semiconductor’s Digital and Mixed Signal Group (DMSG). “In addition, the acquisition will strengthen the company’s talent base and add an experienced design and applications engineering team for the image sensor market segment. The 2D high-speed CMOS image sensors from the ISBU will significantly strengthen and complement ON Semiconductor’s image sensor products for the industrial, medical, computing and military/aerospace markets.”

ON Semiconductor’s current products target one dimensional image sensing with particular focus on contact image sensing and ambient/proximity sensors. Once the acquisition is closed, the company will have a complete image sensing product offering between 1D and 2D sensors and across multiple end-markets.

Pursuant to the agreement, ON Semiconductor is expected to acquire approximately 100 patents and patent applications related exclusively to the business and receive appropriate intellectual property licenses from Cypress Semiconductor in order to continue to conduct and grow the business. As part of the transaction, approximately 80 Cypress Semiconductor ISBU employees will join the ON Semiconductor organization.

Thanks to T.B. for sending me the link!

Update: EETimes gives some background information on ON Semi recent acqusitions.

Stream of News from EI 2011 Continues

Albert Theuwissen published his second news report from Electronic Imaging 2011 conference. Two very interesting presentations have been reviewed:

Paper from NHK, presented by Ryohei Funatsu, “Single-chip color imaging for UHDTV camera with a 33M-pixel CMOS image sensor”

“Optimizing quantum efficiency in a stacked CMOS sensor”, by Lumiense Photonics, HanVision Co., and Alternative Vision Corp. Presentation was done by Dave Gilblom of Alternative Vision Corp.

Varioptic Announces 2nd Generation Lens with Image Stabilization

Varioptic has completely re-designed its web site and announced the second generation of its liquid lens. The B617 lens is the first offering in the “Baltic” family of products that integrates Optical Image Stabilization and Autofocus functionality in the same element. The new lens is said to use up to 90% less power than VCM actuator.

The B617 lens will start sampling in April 2011.

Nikon D7000 DSLR Uses 16MP Sony Sensor

Chipworks teardown of Nikon D7000 mid-range DSLR reveals that it uses Sony IMX071 sensor. The 16.2MP sensor has 4.8um pixels.

Albert Theuwissen Reports from EI 2011 - Part 1

Albert Theuwissen starts his report series from Electronic Imaging 2011 conference. The first post talks about "A prototype high-speed CMOS image sensor with 10,000,000 burst-frame rate and 10,000 continuous-frame rate" by Tohoku University, Japan.

The original paper link is here.

3D Sensing Forum at ISSCC 2011

There is "Image Sensors for 3d Capture" forum at ISSCC 2011 (F5 in the Advance Program). The forum has attracted a number of well-known speakers:

Review of Optical 3D Ranging Techniques and Key Design Challenges for Required Image Sensors
Peter Seitz, CSEM, Landquart, Switzerland

3D Time-of-Flight Image Capture with Pulsed Illumination
Pierre Magnan, ISAE, Toulouse, France

3D Time-of-Flight Image Capture Using Quantum Efficiency Modulation (I've heard this presentation would be removed from the final program, unfortunately)
Cyrus Bamji, Canesta, Sunnyvale, CA

3D ToF Image Capture with Drift Field Pixel Structures
Bernhard Buettgen, MESA Imaging, Zurich, Switzerland

3D Time-of-Flight Image Capture Based on SPADs
Edoardo Charbon, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

High-Speed 3D Image Capture Using 1D Structured Light
Shingo Mandai, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Single-Chip Stereo Vision Cameras
Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Multi-Aperture Image Sensor for 3D Capture
Keith Fife, Ubixum, Palo Alto, CA

Update: J.S. just sent me the updated program where Canesta place was changed to another presentation (Thanks J.S.!):

Arrays of Angle-Sensitive Pixels in Standard CMOS for 3D Light-Field Capture
Alyosha Molnar (Cornell Univ, USA)

The updated program is here: