Yahoo: TI officially announces TC922 high sensitivity WDR sensor. Each 5.6um pixel has a photodiode and a Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor (LOFIC), which can hold a large number of photoelectrons for very bright lighting conditions. The LOFIC technology enables the sensor's dynamic range to reach 94dB.
TI has been developing the WDR sensor based on LOFIC technology with Tohoku University Prof. Shigetoshi Sugawa Laboratory. The sensor is said to be able to handle the photo-signals from several to approximately 200K electrons by single exposure.
The first customer for the sensor is SANYO Electric, using it in WDR cameras range. TI also offers IP camera reference design with the new sensor.
The new TI sensor is aimed on the HDR market that is currently dominated by Pixim. Omnivision too recently announced HDR sensor for automotive and security markets. With these new entries, the market becomes quite crowded. First and foremost this puts Pixim in danger, as it has much less resources to compete with its rivals.
I'm not a patent attorney but it sure seems like the claims of Micron's US patent No. 6,888,122 "cascaded integration" cover everything TI is doing with the Tohoku Univ re-invention. Just sayin'...there's like 70 claims and the first claim seems to nail it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a patent attorney either. But I doubt sues Micron sues TI now, just to get counter-sued. This is the last thing it needs on the verge of Aptina spin-off. Then, after the spin-off it will be hard for little Aptina to sue such a juggernaut, like TI.
ReplyDeleteMy ears are buzzing.
ReplyDelete-EF
If you mean "Pixim Killer", this is not my word.
ReplyDelete"ears are buzzing" means someone is talking about you. Or in this case, my IP. -EF
ReplyDelete