Sony Fab 5 Clean Rooms Consume 30% Less Power

Sony publishes its sustainability initiatives with a focus on image sensor production this year:

• "Responsibility" regarding the environment:
  ＜Energy Conservation＞ At the newly constructed Fab 5 within Nagasaki Technology Center, installation of the latest energy-saving technology has resulted in a 30% improvement in the energy efficiency of clean rooms*. Additionally, 70% of the water used on the production lines is collected and reused.
  * Estimate based on data from the Nagasaki Technology Center for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2016 (FY2015).
• ＜Renewable Energy＞ Sony is proceeding with the installation of solar panels at its manufacturing sites in Japan. In addition, Sony Device Technology (Thailand) Co., Ltd. is moving forward with the largest scale installation of solar panels among any facility within the Sony Group. Together with the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates, the site is expected to run on 100% renewable electricity by the end of the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2022 (FY2021).
• "Contribution" to the environment:
  The "IMX500" intelligent vision sensor developed by Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation is equipped with AI processing functionality within the logic chip of the image sensor. This technology is expected to support advancement in areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT). Processing data on the sensor itself, at the edge of edge systems, makes it possible to extract only the required metadata (semantic information). As a result, this technology contributes to a reduction in power consumption by lowering the volume of data sent to and processed within the cloud, while also enhancing latency (response speed) and having positive implications for privacy.
  "IMX500" is being used in trials of solutions addressing social issues such as traffic congestion and accidents in urban areas, and as part of the effort to reduce the energy consumed by air conditioning systems in buildings.