Gpixel and TowerJazz Announce 150MP/10fps Sensor

Business Wire: TowerJazzand and Gpixel, a custom IC design house in China, announce the release of Gpixel’s world’s highest resolution CMOS image sensor using TowerJazz’s TS18IS technology. Gpixel’s 150MP GMAX3005 sensor targets medical, industrial and scientific markets. The new sensor from Gpixel and additional products expected to be released this year will answer the growing demand in China for high end image sensors.

"We believe that an intelligent imaging system is essential for all future smart ICs. The core of such an imaging system is a high performance, robust, reliable and integrated image sensor. We chose TowerJazz’s CMOS image sensor manufacturing process due to its excellent pixel performance, stitching technology for wafer scale die size, and its outstanding pixel and process customization capabilities," said Dr. Xinyang Wang, Founder & CEO, Gpixel, "We believe China is on its way to become the biggest market in the world for high-end image sensor products and TowerJazz, as our strategic partner, is critical to our success."

"We are pleased Gpixel is starting the production ramp of their high resolution image sensor and we are confident they will grow rapidly to address China’s rising demand in the high end CMOS image sensor market," said Dr. Avi Strum, VP and GM of TowerJazz CMOS Image Sensor Business Unit. "Gpixel’s GMAX3005 was a first time success due to Gpixel’s design engineers’ very high skills and knowledge of CIS design. We believe Gpixel is the most interesting and promising CIS company in China today."

Gpixel’s GMAX3005 is a monochrome image sensor with 150MP 5.5um-sized active pixels, and is capable of running at 10fps at full resolution with higher frame rates achieved in row-windowing mode. This “wafer-scale” sensor has an 167.6mm x 30.1mm chip size including 165mm x 27.5mm photon-sensitive area having 30,000×5,000 pixel array. GMAX3005 has 16-bit on-chip ADC with 12-bit ENOB, and 120 LVDS output pairs running at 200Mbps. The sensor consumes less than 2.5W at full frame rate in full resolution. GMAX3005 reaches a noise level of less than 4e-, a dynamic range of 75.4dB, and over 70% quantum efficiency at 550nm wavelength. GMAX3005 has a dark current as low as 10e-/s/pixel at 32ºC, which makes long exposure possible even without active cooling.

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About Gpixel, Inc.
Gpixel Inc. is a Chinese company specialized in providing high-end customized and off-the-shelf CMOS image sensor solutions for industrial, medical, and scientific applications. The company was founded in 2013 by experienced CMOS image sensor designers and semiconductor physicists. In less than two years, Gpixel has filed more than 10 patent applications, covering from global shutter pixel, HDR pixel, low power and high speed ADCs. Gpixel products focus on extremely high resolution (over 100MP), very low noise (<2e-), high DR (>100dB) and ultra-high speed (>2Gpix/s) image sensor applications.

Update: According to LinkedIn records, Gpixel Founder and CEO Xinyang Wang is also a professor at Chinese Academy of Science. He used to work on image sensor design for On Semi and CMOSIS in Belgium from 2008 to 2012.