Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Apple iPhone X Official Details
Mashable: Apple officially unveils its iPhone X featuring "True Depth Camera System" based on structured light and Face ID unlock. A double tap on the side button is necessary to activate Face ID system. The chances for unlocking for a wrong face are said to be 1:1,000,000:
Espros Ports its CCD on CMOS Process to TSMC Fab
ESPROS Photonics announces the manufacturing process for its generation of ToF and spectral sensing chips from ESPROS Photonics has been finalized and frozen for mass production effective August 15 2017. This completes a customization project conducted during the last 18 months of the future ToF sensors epc660, epc635 and epc611 among a series of ESPROS customer specific imagers at SSMC, a TSMC affiliated fab.
ESPROS Photonics has developed BSI technology for high QE in the NIR and high performance CCD on a CMOS process. The achieved QE is almost 90% at 850nm and 75% at 905nm. ESPROS line of products with 8×8, 160×60 and 320×240 pixel resolution is based on the same pixel and process. The production of these imagers is now established in the TSMC facility and released by ESPROS.
ESPROS CEO and founder Beat De Coi states: «After an intensive technology research & development, product design and market introduction effort, our next goal for the time-of-flight sensor products was to establish a robust supply chain, which would be able to handle the projected industry growth. With the completion of the customization project and the accomplishment of the process freeze with the global foundry leader TSMC, we are concluding a many year effort to establish this product portfolio. This is a major milestone in the development of our young company and for our customers success.»
Maria Marced, President TSMC Europe adds: «We are proud to support ESPROS with this customization project, and together we have successfully achieved Process Release to Production. TSMC’s strength in Analog, Mixed Signal and Sensor manufacturing has enabled us to achieve this milestone in the shortest possible time. We are now ready for mass production and we look forward to a long and successful collaboration with ESPROS.»
ESPROS Photonics has developed BSI technology for high QE in the NIR and high performance CCD on a CMOS process. The achieved QE is almost 90% at 850nm and 75% at 905nm. ESPROS line of products with 8×8, 160×60 and 320×240 pixel resolution is based on the same pixel and process. The production of these imagers is now established in the TSMC facility and released by ESPROS.
ESPROS CEO and founder Beat De Coi states: «After an intensive technology research & development, product design and market introduction effort, our next goal for the time-of-flight sensor products was to establish a robust supply chain, which would be able to handle the projected industry growth. With the completion of the customization project and the accomplishment of the process freeze with the global foundry leader TSMC, we are concluding a many year effort to establish this product portfolio. This is a major milestone in the development of our young company and for our customers success.»
Maria Marced, President TSMC Europe adds: «We are proud to support ESPROS with this customization project, and together we have successfully achieved Process Release to Production. TSMC’s strength in Analog, Mixed Signal and Sensor manufacturing has enabled us to achieve this milestone in the shortest possible time. We are now ready for mass production and we look forward to a long and successful collaboration with ESPROS.»
Monday, September 11, 2017
TrendForce Forecasts 3D Sensing Market Explosion
TrendForce anticipates that from 2017 onward, the market for 3D sensing solutions in mobile devices will witness leaping growth. The total value of the global market for 3D sensing modules used in mobile devices is estimated to reach $1.5b in 2017 and is forecast to grow at a massive CAGR of 209% to around $14b in 2020.
“Based on an analysis model that includes iPhone-driven demand, the global market for 3D sensing modules used in mobile devices is projected to register a spectacular annual growth rate of 703% in the total value for 2017,” said TrendForce analyst Jason Tsai. iPhone with 3D sensing would generate significant interests in the related hardware from Samsung, Huawei and other smartphone brands. “As 3D sensing apps mature, smartphone makers will also accelerate the incorporation of related hardware into their mainstream offerings. TrendForce therefore expects another demand surge in the mobile 3D sensing market in 2019.”
Tsai added that the 3D sensing feature on smartphones is currently used mainly for tasks that involve facial recognition of the user, such as unlocking the device and mobile payment.
“Based on an analysis model that includes iPhone-driven demand, the global market for 3D sensing modules used in mobile devices is projected to register a spectacular annual growth rate of 703% in the total value for 2017,” said TrendForce analyst Jason Tsai. iPhone with 3D sensing would generate significant interests in the related hardware from Samsung, Huawei and other smartphone brands. “As 3D sensing apps mature, smartphone makers will also accelerate the incorporation of related hardware into their mainstream offerings. TrendForce therefore expects another demand surge in the mobile 3D sensing market in 2019.”
Tsai added that the 3D sensing feature on smartphones is currently used mainly for tasks that involve facial recognition of the user, such as unlocking the device and mobile payment.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
SmartSens Improves Its Sensors Sensitivity
China-based SmartSens reports that it has improved NIR sensitivity of its 5MP 2um TSI pixel SC5035 sensor:
Also, SmartSens announces a new ILLUMi low-light technology:
"ILLUMi is an innovative pixel technology that has more than twice the sensitivity of ordinary sensors in visible and near infrared light areas and can be used to capture stunning high-quality full-color images. SmartSens Technology's three star-level products can be used to capture color images in very dark light, while the minimum illumination required to take black and white images close to 0Lux, which means iLLUMi can be invisible in the human eye can not see the night Shoot video."
Also, SmartSens announces a new ILLUMi low-light technology:
"ILLUMi is an innovative pixel technology that has more than twice the sensitivity of ordinary sensors in visible and near infrared light areas and can be used to capture stunning high-quality full-color images. SmartSens Technology's three star-level products can be used to capture color images in very dark light, while the minimum illumination required to take black and white images close to 0Lux, which means iLLUMi can be invisible in the human eye can not see the night Shoot video."
KGI on Apple iPhone "Face ID" Internals
AppleInsider quotes KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on the oncoming iPhone "Face ID" design. It employs 4 cameras: a regular front camera, structured light 3D camera and proximity ToF sensor:
"According to Kuo, Apple's system relies on four main components: a structured light transmitter, structure light receiver, front camera and time of flight/proximity sensor.
Kuo points out that structured light transmitter and receiver setups have distance constraints. With an estimated 50 to 100 centimeter hard cap, Apple needs to include a proximity sensor capable of performing time of flight calculations. The analyst believes data from this specialized sensor will be employed to trigger user experience alerts. For example, a user might be informed that they are holding an iPhone too far or too close to their face for optimal 3D sensing."
"According to Kuo, Apple's system relies on four main components: a structured light transmitter, structure light receiver, front camera and time of flight/proximity sensor.
Kuo points out that structured light transmitter and receiver setups have distance constraints. With an estimated 50 to 100 centimeter hard cap, Apple needs to include a proximity sensor capable of performing time of flight calculations. The analyst believes data from this specialized sensor will be employed to trigger user experience alerts. For example, a user might be informed that they are holding an iPhone too far or too close to their face for optimal 3D sensing."
Inuitive Introduces NU4000 3D Vision Processor
PRNewswire: Inuitive introduces the NU4000, a multi-core vision processor that supports 3D Imaging, Deep Learning and Computer Vision processing for AR and VR, Drones, Robots and other applications. This next generation processor enables high quality depth sensing, "On-chip SLAM," Computer Vision and Deep Learning (CNN) capabilities.
NU4000 provides computing power exceeding a total of 8 Terra OPS, said to be the most powerful vision processor available:
NU4000 provides computing power exceeding a total of 8 Terra OPS, said to be the most powerful vision processor available:
- 3 Vector Cores that provide 500 Giga OPS
- A dedicated CNN processor that exceeds 2 Terra OPS enabling deep neural networks such as VGG16 reaching 40 frames (ROIs) per second at 10 times less power of the equivalent GPU, DSP or FPGA implementations
- 3 Powerful CPU Cores that provide more than 13,000 CoreMark
- Depth processing engine that delivers a throughput of 120Mp/s and supports multiple simultaneous streams of stereo and structured light
- SLAM engine enabling accurate key point extraction at 120fps from 2 cameras simultaneously
- Advanced Time-Warp HW engine that reduces the Motion-to-Photon latency to 1msec for extensive VR and MR use cases
- More than 3MB of on-chip SLAM servicing the vision cores
- High throughput LPDDR4 interface that reduce external memory access bottlenecks
- Connects to 6 cameras and 2 displays
- Chip area 7 x 8mm2 in 12nm process
Saturday, September 09, 2017
Dual Camera Trend Reaches Extreme Low-End Smartphones
DeviceSpecifications: These days, dual rear camera is used even in very low end phones, such as this one:
Mapping Imaging Array Temperature
TU Delft and Harvest Imaging publish an open access paper "Temperature Sensors Integrated into a CMOS Image Sensor" by Accel Abarca, Shuang Xie, Jules Markenhof, and Albert Theuwissen. Apparently, the paper is a continuation of the MSc thesis "Integrating a Temperature Sensor into a CMOS Image Sensor."
"The test image sensor consists of pixels and temperature sensors pixels (=Tixels). The size of the Tixels is 11 μm × 11 μm. Pixels and Tixels are placed next to each other in the active imaging array and use the same readout circuits. The design and the first measurements of the combined image-temperature sensor are presented."
"The test image sensor consists of pixels and temperature sensors pixels (=Tixels). The size of the Tixels is 11 μm × 11 μm. Pixels and Tixels are placed next to each other in the active imaging array and use the same readout circuits. The design and the first measurements of the combined image-temperature sensor are presented."
Can Machine Learning Overcome Absence of Lens?
Researches from University of Utah at Salt Lake City proved that AI can be somewhat successful in distinguishing between the digits as seen by image sensor with no lens. "Lensless-camera based machine learning for image classification" paper by Ganghun Kim, Stefan Kapetanovic, Rachael Palmer, and Rajesh Menon is published by arxiv.org. From the abstract:
"Finally, we demonstrated that the trained ML algorithm is able to classify the digits with accuracy as high as 99% for 2 digits. Our approach clearly demonstrates the potential for non-human cameras in machine-based decision-making scenarios."
"Finally, we demonstrated that the trained ML algorithm is able to classify the digits with accuracy as high as 99% for 2 digits. Our approach clearly demonstrates the potential for non-human cameras in machine-based decision-making scenarios."
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