Yole on Image Sensor Market

Yole Developpement published a presentation on image sensor market dated by June 7, 2013. The presentation mostly talks about industrial and machine vision markets, but not only:

Thanks to MM for the link!

BSI vs FSI at 2.4um Pixel Size

DxO has tested the latest Sony Rx100 II camera featuring 20.2MP BSI sensor with 2.4um pixels and compares it with the last year Rx100 camera with identical size FSI pixels. Sony says the new sensor is 40% more sensitive to light. DxO measures a more modest 24% ISO improvement. I'm not sure if ISO is measured just in the center of the sensor, or over the whole sensor area including sides and corners. Possibly, corners could show a bigger improvement due to a better angular response of the BSI sensor.

Update: Sony posted an Youtube video comparing the older FSI sensor with the newer BSI one:

ToF Imaging Review

Imaging and Machine Vision Europe (IMVE) Magazine published a nice overview of ToF imaging status at different companies. Few quotes:

"'Time-of-flight is not a technique for ultra-high precision 3D imaging,’ notes Ritchie Logan, VP of business development at Scottish TOF company Odos Imaging, adding that applications requiring sub-millimetre precision over short distances are better solved using triangulation or structured light techniques. ‘The natural scale for time-of-flight imaging is over the range of one to 20 metres, with a precision of around 1cm,’ he says. Odos Imaging’s TOF system has a resolution of 1.3 megapixels, which makes it more suitable for industrial vision.

Odos’ sensor has a relatively simple pixel design, meaning the company can scale it to higher resolutions, while placing the majority of processing within the digital domain. The use of a simple pixel design also provides a dual benefit, in that each pixel can act to capture distance or intensity. In effect, the system can provide both data types, acting as a conventional camera during one frame before capturing 3D data during the next, says Logan."

"Pmd’s chips will be ready for mass-volume production by Infineon in 2014. The sensors for the consumer market will have resolutions of 160 x 120 pixels or 352 x 288 pixels."

"In a presentation at the Image Sensors conference (IS2013) in March, Jim Lewis, CEO of Swiss TOF company Mesa Imaging, set out what he considered were some of the myths surrounding what time-of-flight technology can achieve, one of which concerned its ability to operate outdoors. He said the technology needed improvement for outdoor applications, where direct sunlight, longer operating ranges, variable scenes, and bad weather conditions all make acquiring accurate 3D data difficult."

Toshiba 1.12um Pixel Mass Production Starts Today

Business Wire: Toshiba announces that its 13MP, 1.12um BSI pixel T4K37 image sensor mass production starts today. The T4K37 was first announced in Nov 2012. The new sensor features HDR, CNR (Color Noise Reduction) and high frame rate of 30fps at full resolution (RAW10).

Inside Softkinetic ToF Camera

A teardown of Softkinetic ToF camera is presented in the Youtube video below. The image sensor part starts at 19:36 time:

Novati Foundry

Gigaom writes that Austin, TX-based Novati opens foundry service this Monday, offering image sensor services, among other things: "The company has developed a new type of image sensor for someone trying to build a better camera, ... and it has improved night vision goggles for the military by putting a different type of material on top of the traditional silicon used by chips." Novati belongs to 3D integration company Tezzaron, that acquired SVTC Technologies manufacturing assets in Oct. 2012. The manufacturing facility used to be Sematech fab before SVTC.

Novati's business model is to produce runs of 200-500 wafers for clients that "don’t need to chase Moore’s Law to the new frontiers of physics", offering exceptional flexibility with 200mm and 300mm (BEOL only) equipment. That way customers can try different ideas and develop new devices that are hard to fit to the standard CMOS process flows. Being a subsidiary of Tezzaron, Novati can use its 3D integration ideas with TSV. The company has also licensed Ziptronix wafer bonding patents.

More about Novati is in IFTLE blog:

Kodak 4500fps Camera Circa 1993

A Youtube video below shows a teardown of Kodak Ektapro 4540 high-speed video camera. The camera shoots 4500fps video at 256 x 256 pixel resolution. The image sensor is nmos-based CID (not CCD) and is described in Kris Balch's paper "HS 4540 Key Technologies":

The sensor part starts at 13:05 time in the video and shows quite a detailed microscope overview of the imager:

How to Measure Non-Linearity, Part 6

Albert Theuwissen continues the series of "How to Measure..." posts. The latest post discusses the linearity of gain control in image sensors.

Canon Announces Dual Pixel CMOS AF Technology

Business Wire: Canon announces a Dual Pixel CMOS AF, an autofocus technology for the EOS 70D Digital SLR camera. Dual Pixel CMOS AF, a phase-detection AF technology conducted directly on the image sensor plane, employs a CMOS sensor on which all of the effective pixels are able to perform both imaging and phase-detection AF simultaneously to achieve dramatically improved AF performance over prior EOS cameras during Live View and video shooting. Each individual pixel on the CMOS sensor incorporates two independent photodiodes which output signals that can be used for both imaging and the phase-detection AF. Compared with earlier generations of Canon’s image-plane phase-detection AF, Dual Pixel CMOS AF realizes shorter focusing times, outstanding tracking performance and smoother autofocusing during video shooting.

Compared with the EOS Rebel SL1, which employs Hybrid CMOS AF II, the EOS 70D Digital SLR camera (scheduled to go on sale in September 2013), which is the first camera to feature Dual Pixel CMOS AF, not only achieves AF speed that is approximately 30% faster but also delivers improved Movie Servo AF tracking for continuously smooth focusing during video shooting, even when filming quickly moving subjects.

Here is the description of how it works form the Cannon's technology page:

"Each pixel on the EOS 70D camera's sensor consists of two independent photodiodes that function both as imaging points and as individual phase-difference AF sensors. When the shutter button is pressed, parallax images on each photodiode of the pixel are detected, the amount of lens drive is calculated to correct the amount of shift in the AF points, and AF is achieved nearly instantaneously. During image capture, the same two photodiodes record the image and output as a single pixel. By placing approximately 40.3 million photodiodes on the camera's sensor, two per pixel, this caliber of AF is possible on approximately 80% of the image plane, vertically and horizontally. When the image or video clip is being captured, the CMOS sensor behaves as it always has with EOS SLR cameras, unimpeded by the dual photodiodes and recording each individual pixel with virtually no loss of detail or sharpness."

Update: Canon Singapore published Vimeo video on the Dual Pixel AF principle:

Rumor: Primesense in Acquisition Talks for $300M

NoCamels News: Israeli Hebrew-language newspaper Calcalist reports that Primesense is in acquisition talks with companies like Samsung, Sony or Apple, with a price tag of $300M. The talks are said to be just in the beginning stage. So far Primesense raised $85M and currently has 150 employees.