Toshiba Drives Industry to TSV

Semiconductor International's Philip Garrou presents his view on TSV technology adoption in CMOS image sensors:

“Their [sensors] pricing was in significant decline last year, so not much was expected to happen there. But then Toshiba (Tokyo) not only announced that they would be the first to put through-silicon vias (TSVs) into their CMOS image sensor to reduce the size, but that they were selling it essentially at the same price. This forced the other players to jump on the bandwagon over the next 12 months. So Samsung (Seoul, South Korea), Micron, Oki (Tokyo) — all the big players in CMOS image sensors — followed suit at a time when the price was significantly deteriorated. They did this only because Toshiba made the first move, and they had no choice but to follow.”

"Although inventory levels generally tend to serve as a moderating factor to the purchase of new devices, in the case of the new CMOS image sensor the OEMs that did not have it found that they were stuck with their inventories of non 3-D devices. Meanwhile, those who were able to acquire and use them made a considerable profit based on the architecture’s smaller form factor."