Soitec Licensing Circuit Stacking Technology

I-Micronews: Soitec announced that Smart Stacking, its circuit stacking technology, is now ready for both manufacturing and technology transfer. Smart Stacking enables the production of 3D-integrated image sensors.

Bernard Aspar, VP of the Tracit business unit says: “For lower volume applications, we can provide circuit stacking custom manufacturing services, but we recognize that higher volume applications may be served best by transferring a customized process to our customers, giving them opportunities to simplify their logistics, reduce costs and shorten cycle times. Therefore we provide both manufacturing service and technology licensing options.”

Aptina Infringes on Accolade's Patent?

TopNews, AppleInsider: Accolade Systems filed a lawsuit to stop Apple from infringing its patent. In the filing in court, Accolade Systems has claimed that "Aptina Imaging and Micron are violating a patent for detecting a camera's sensor intensity saturation by producing three CMOS image sensors".

By using at least one of these sensors in the iPhone, Apple is responsible for contributing to the violation of the patent, Accolade says. An original version of the lawsuit obtained by AppleInsider had mentioned Apple only incidentally and didn't include it as a defendant, revealing that Accolade had originally been content to sue just Aptina and Micron before deciding Apple could be a target as well.

Image Sensors To Rebounce in 2010-11

EETimes: Arizona-based market research group IC Insights says that CMOS image sensors, after hitting a record-high $5.0 billion in 2008, are forecast to drop 10 percent this year, but will then bounce back with a 23 percent jump in 2010 to a new record of $5.1 billion.

Hitachi Invented Image Sensors: History Lesson

Tech-On has an article on origins of image sensors inspired by Caltech's lawsuit against Sony, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Samsung. It sounds like the defenders claim that APS were actually invented by Hitachi, rather than JPL. It's interesting to see what would be the court verdict on this.

Update: Electrons and Holes blog adds few more history bits on image sensor's early years.

Rosnes First Patent Applications Published

Up to now, there was very little known about Rosnes, a Japan-based stealth-mode image sensor start-up company. The first five published patent applications reveal a bit of info about the direction the company is taking:

SOLID-STATE IMAGE PICKUP DEVICE by YAMAGUCHI TAKUMI
JP2008270423, published 2008-11-06

SOLID-STATE IMAGE PICKUP DEVICE by YAMAGUCHI TAKUMI
JP2008270381, published 2008-11-06

SOLID STATE IMAGING DEVICE by YAMAGUCHI TAKUMI and OHTA SOUGO
WO2008133146, published 2008-11-06

SOLID STATE IMAGING DEVICE by YAMAGUCHI TAKUMI and IWASAWA TAKAHIRO
WO2008133145, published 2008-11-06

SOLID STATE IMAGING DEVICE by TERAKAWA SUMIO
WO2008133144, published 2008-11-06

The patents talk about some incremental pixel improvements. I'm unable to read Japanese, but many of the improvements seem to have prior art to me. One of them, WO2008133144, talks about using p-type substrate with n-type epi:



Another application, WO2008133145, depicts 8-way shared 4T pixel:

Weekly News Log

Yahoo: Omnivision continues to exploit its 1.75um pixel design, this time with 9MP OV9810. The imager also provides 1080p HD video at 30fps. At full 9MP resolution its speed drops to 8.9fps. The 1/2.3" OV9810 delivers 960mV/lux-sec sensitivity. The OV9810 is immediately available for customer sampling with volume production slated for the second half of calendar 2009. EETAsia adds that the sensor's pricing is under $10 in volumes of 100K.

Yahoo: Aptina announced MT9V117 VGA SoC in 1/6" optical format, allowing 4mm-thin module designs. Its target applications are notebooks and webcams. The sensor's speed is 60fps in VGA mode and up to 120fps at lower resolutions. The MT9V117 is currently sampling with production expected in late Q2 2009.

Digitimes published a couple of rumors about recent Hynix successes. The first one says that HP asked its OEM Inventec to add Hynix' products to the testing list of sensors for its upcoming 10" netbook expected to begin volume production in May or June. Initially HP planned to use OmniVision's OV7690 in these netbooks. Inventec does not rule out the possibility of switching supply to Hynix from OmniVision, if testing results are good enough.

The second rumor says that Hynix will begin shipments of sensors for Samsung and LG handsets in the third quarter this year at the earliest. Initial orders include VGA and 2MP products, according to Digitimes sources. The company also plans to begin sampling 3-, 5- and 8MP products with customers in Q3 2009 with shipments to follow in 2010. From Digitimes' picture below it looks like Hynix was unable to fit all the decoupling caps inside the module and has added an outside tail for them:



Another Digitimes article tells that TSMC got orders from Himax and Advasense for 2, 3, 5 and 13MP sensors. Meanwhile, SMIC has secured CIS orders from most related IC design houses in China.

Customer Loyalty Research

Chipworks published a nice table of camera phone brands and sensor vendors they use. The main conclusion is there is no customer loyalty in the mobile imaging world. Are you surprised? Me not.

Thanks to R.F. for the info.

Himax Imaging Begins Image Sensor Shipments

Yahoo: Himax announced that in less than two years since the company established its CMOS image sensor team, it has launched 3MP, 2MP and VGA sensors and will soon commence small-scale commercial shipments to one of the world's leading cell phone camera module manufacturers. The company expects the product segment to ramp in the second half of the year.

Himax's CMOS image sensor was developed under Himax Imaging, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Himax. Established from scratch in March 2007, Himax Imaging has grown into a team of 50 employees, with R&D in Irvine, California, and Jhubei, Taiwan and sales, marketing and technical support in Taiwan, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The rumor is that the new sensors are based on 1.75um pixels - could be a great news, if announced 3 years ago.

CMOSIS Won European Space Projects

CMOSIS announced it has won a tender the French National Space Agency - CNES. CNES has selected the consortium of CMOSIS and Thales Alenia Space to develop the next generation TDI sensor in standard CMOS image sensor technology. This novel image sensor will have a pixel size of 13um and up to 50 TDI stages. The sensor targets CCD performance in terms of quantum efficiency, dynamic MTF and read noise.

Also, ESA has granted a consortium of Galileo Avionica, BAE Systems, Thales Alenia Space, and CMOSIS the contract for the design and prototyping of a medium-high accuracy digital sun sensor for satellite attitude determination.

Junichi Nakamura Awarded for Contributions to Image Sensors

Yahoo: Aptina is pleased to announce Junichi Nakamura, Ph.D., Managing Director for Aptina’s Tokyo CMOS Image Sensor Design Center is a recipient of the 2008 Takayanagi Memorial Award for Encouragement. Dr. Nakamura’s selection for the Takayanagi Memorial Award for Encouragement was based upon a number of factors including his active pixel sensor research and development that preceded the concept of modern CMOS image sensors in the early 1990’s; his invention of novel readout methods for active pixel sensors, and his leadership of the development of a CMOS image sensor for Super-Hi Vision cameras.

Today must be a day of awards. Yahoo: DALSA announces that Dr. Savvas Chamberlain, DALSA's founder, CTO and Chairman, has been made a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada. Founded in 1980, in 2008 DALSA employed almost 1000 people and recorded over $200 million in revenue.