GizomoChina reports that UK-headquartered WaveTouch has filed claims against Goodix and Huawei over infringement on its optical fingerprint patents. WaveTouch Group Ltd. is a Joint Venture between OPDI Technologies A/S, Denmark and O-Net Communications Limited, Hong Kong.

BusinessWire: David Hall, who with Marta Thoma Hall holds voting control of approximately 58.4% of the outstanding common stock of Velodyne Lidar, Inc.

Yahoo: Bloomberg reports that TSMC has sold $326.8M worth of VisEra shares, cutting its stake in the company to 73.9%, according to a filing to the Taiwan stock exchange. The transaction was to facilitate a proposed listing of VisEra in Taiwan.

Reuters, BusinessWire: Velodyne Lidar has removed its founder David Hall as chairman and his wife Marta Thoma Hall as marketing chief for a lack of honesty, a charge Marta Hall said the couple was not allowed to rebut in a board meeting she described as an “ambush.

It came to my attention that there is a new image sensor startup in India - 3rdiTech, a spin-off from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. The startup was founded by students of Albert Theuwissen's former student Mukul Sarkar who is Professor at IIT Delhi now.

Sony reports developing SPAD sensor for ist LiDAR with a record Photon Detection Efficiency (PDE) of 22% at 905nm, more than 15% at 940nm, and almost 30% at 850nm. It's also claimed to be the first stacked SPAD for LiDAR applications.

Sony presents its full-frame 50.

ID Quantique publishes a webinar "Why Quantum Technology matters in mobile phone security":

BusinessWire: ams launches the TMD2636, a fully integrated proximity sensor which occupies 30% less space than currently available solutions, and so delivers transformational added value to manufacturers of True Wireless Stereo (TWS) earbuds.

Forbes, Reuters, SeekingAlpha: Ford has completely divested from Velodyne according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Velodyne. In August, 2016, Ford and Baidu each invested $150M in Velodyne to secure the LiDAR supply for their autonomous vehicles research.

This year, ISSCC has not released its usual media kit with preview snippets of the most interesting papers. So, I'm filling the void with few such snippets. The first one is about Samsung 0.64um pixel:"1/2.74-inch 32Mpixel-Prototype CMOS Image Sensor with 0.

Samsung publishes a promotional video explaining its Smart-ISO Pro feature:

New Imaging Technologies announces the release of several new SWIR sensors now produced with NIT in-house designed stacking technology, internally named NH.The NH technology allows to stack a photodiode array (PDA) of InGaAs to a CMOS ROIC at pixel level.

Wccftech: Goldman Sachs believes that SMIC is poised to benefit from the demand increase for image sensors on the 40nm to 65nm process nodes.

Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, publishes an arxiv.org paper "A Simulation Study of Electric Field Engineering with Multi-Level Pinned Photodiodes for Fast and Complete Charge Transfer" by Hamzeh Alaibakhsh, Mohammad Azim Karami.

GlobeNewsWire: Himax updates about its image sensor business:"Himax sees continuous surging demands for its CMOS image sensors for web camera and notebook as the new norm of virtual conferences shows no signs of receding.

ON Semi reports its Q4 2020 results with image sensor sales showing about 4.

Samsung presents "A 4-tap 3.5μm 1.

US Federal Circuit Court publishes the oral arguments between Hamamatsu and SiOnyx lawyers, a nice example of how these lawsuits are managed.

The Sigma 28-70mm f2.8 DG DN is a general-purpose zoom for full-frame mirrorless cameras, available in Sony e or Leica L mounts. It provides a more affordable option for those who want a walkaround zoom with an f2.

BusinessWire, BusinessWire: Samsung introduces ISOCELL GN2, a 50MP sensor with 1.4μm pixels. The GN2 offers up to 100MP imaging, improved AF through Dual Pixel Pro technology, staggered HDR, and Smart ISO Pro.

SeekingAlpha: Tower Semi's earnings call transcript gives some details about its image sensor sales.

ImagingResource: Sigma publishes a statement about its full-frame Foveon X3 sensor development issues:"In February 2020, we announced our decision to restart our plans for a full frame Foveon X3 sensor camera, beginning with the development of a new sensor technology.

International Image Sensor Workshop publishes the Final Call for Papers. The abstracts are due April 17, 2021.

BusinessWire: FabExchange, a private equity and divestiture partner, has completed the acquisition of ON Semiconductor’s Rochester, NY, site. The property was originally constructed by Eastman Kodak Company in 1959 and expanded in 1980.

Albert Theuwissen's excellent Plenary video is available on Youtube again: Update Feb. 22, 2021: An official ISSCC video is now posted in ISSCC channel.

Albert Theuwissen delivers Plenary presentation "There’s More to the Picture Than Meets the Eye (and in the future it will become only much more)""Over the last five decades, solid-state imaging has gone through a difficult “childhood”, changing technology during its “adolescence”, and fin...

Ricoh publishes a video explaining the importance of low ripple supply for CMOS sensors:

EET-China publishes Smartsens article on the company's machine vision sensors evolution:

BusinessWire: ON Semiconductor introduces the RSL10 Smart Shot Camera, combining cloud-based AI with ultra-low-power image capture and recognition for IoT endpoints. The camera is based on ARX3A0 CMOS sensor with 560 x 560 pixel resolution, 2.2um pixel size, and a frame rate up to 360 fps.

A team of researchers from Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, and University of Defence, Brno, Czech Republic, publishes an interesting MDPI paper "Experimental Comparison between Event and Global Shutter Cameras" by Ondřej Holešovs...

Techcrunch: Metalenz raises $10M in series A investment to productize flat lens for camera module. “We’re really using all standard semiconductor processes and materials here, the exact same equipment — but with lenses instead of electronics,” said Rob Devlin, the company's founder and CEO.

Sony reports its quarterly results and updates forecast for its fiscal year ending on March 31. The quarterly CIS sales dropped by 10% due to the lower mobile phone sensor sales and cheaper product mix.

ON Semi reports its Q4 2020 results with image sensor sales showing about 4.3% growth over the same quarter in 2019: Update: SeekingAlpha publishes ON Semi earning call transcript featuring the company's new CEO  Hassane El-Khoury.

AIM Micro Systems publishes a promotional video showing different technologies and equipment involved in image sensor packaging:

TechInsights holds a free webinar "Selected Imager and Sensor Trends and Comparisons" on March 3, 2021. "The intent of this webinar is to share selected content from our 2020 Image Sensor Device Essentials (DEF) subscription annual presentation.

IFNews quotes UBS report with comparison of Samsung smartphone cameras over the years.

PRNewswire: Axcelis has shipped the second Purion XEmax high energy implanter to a leading CIS foundry in the Asia Pacific region.Bill Bintz, EVP, Product Development explained, "Strong growth in the image sensor market continues to drive robust demand for high energy implant.

GizChina, IFNews: According to Ni Fei, president of ZTE’s mobile division and president of Nubia Technologies, ZTE will showcase the second generation of mass-produced under-screen camera technology at next week’s MWC Shanghai. It will debut under-screen 3D structured light camera.

PRNewswire: AEye and CF Finance Acquisition Corp. III, a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald have entered into a merger agreement. The combined company will be called AEye Holdings, Inc.

Nikon presents is a stacked CMOS sensor with a total pixel count of approximately 17.84MP capable to operate at 1,000 fps speed at full resolution. The sensor supports HDR mode of 110 dB, and 4K x 4K video.The 1-inch stacked sensor has 2.7um pixels.

Update: The links and the data have been removed at ON Semi request. It is not supposed to be publicly available.The original post follows:ON Semi publishes a full characterization report of its relatively new 8.1MP AR0820AT automotive sensor.

BusinessWire: OmniVision announces the OV50A image sensor, combining 50MP, 1.0um pixel size, selective conversion gain and a 1/1.5”optical format with quad phase detection (QPD) AF and on-chip remosaic. QPD enables 2x2 PDAF across the sensor’s entire image array, for 100% coverage.

Sony presents an HDR counter & time stamp-based approach for SPAD sensors:"A 250fps 124dB Dynamic-Range SPAD Image Sensor Stacked with Pixel-Parallel Photon Counter Employing Sub-Frame Extrapolating Architecture for Motion Artifact Suppression"by Jun Ogi, Takafumi Takatsuka, Kazuki Hizu, Yutaka ...

A Nature paper "A universal 3D imaging sensor on a silicon photonics platform" by Christopher Rogers, Alexander Y. Piggott, David J. Thomson, Robert F. Wiser, Ion E. Opris, Steven A. Fortune, Andrew J. Compston, Alexander Gondarenko, Fanfan Meng, Xia Chen, Graham T.

GlobeNewsWire: Teledyne Imaging (former Princeton Instruments group) introduces LACera technology said to be "a significant step forward in CMOS capabilities for advanced imaging which will enable the next generation of scientific discovery.

Albert Theuwissen delivered a keynote at 2020 IEEE Sensors conference titled "Deep-Trench Isolation is Here to Stay!" Below is a video recording of the keynote:

IEEE updates the instructions for paper submission for Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices on “Solid-State Image Sensors” to be published in June 2022:

SeekingAlpha publishes Sony earnings call transcript that gives few more details about the company's CIS business. Sony expects its mobile image sensor business to get back to the growth trajectory in the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2023:"FY 2020 Q3 sales decreased 10% year-on-year to JPY 266.

Sony publishes a large interview with its global shutter image sensor designers titled "Pregius S—to be a bridgehead for pioneering new markets such as robot arms through the pursuit of high speed, multi-pixel as well as size reduction." Few quotes:"...