Archives for April 2015

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Yesterday's Microsoft presentation of the Hololens AR glasses has shown a complex camera system inside. Each Hololens contains at least 6 different cameras, as far as I can count. If Hololens becomes a mass market device, it could be the single biggest market for image sensors:


A company Youtube video presents the Hololens internal design:



Update: MSDN publishes a video interview with Alex Kipman talking about the Hololens design challenges.

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Light startup officially announces that it has entered into a strategic relationship with Foxconn's FIH Mobile Ltd. As part of the strategic partnership, FIH Mobile Ltd. has licensed the Light technology and made an equity investment in Light.

Calvin Chih, CEO of FIH Mobile, says "We see tremendous potential for Light’s technology, and are excited to work with Dave and the Light team. We continue to strive to help consumers and OEM partners enhance their experiences and product offerings pertaining to high quality imaging."

Paul Jacobs, Executive Chairman of Qualcomm and Light investor and board member says "Light’s product will overcome the current limits of capturing high-quality images in small form factors and will enable people to capture great images while they are on the go without trading image quality for convenience."

ExtremeTech publishes more details on Light technology:

"Light is planning to use an array of small cameras — very similar to those you would find in a smartphone today — to mimic a larger camera. By precisely aligning and calibrating the individual cameras, the images from them can be combined to produce a single image of very high quality. By having some of the cameras feature a wide-angle lens, and some a telephoto lens, an optical zoom capability is also possible.

Light’s CTO, Rajiv Laroia, explains that by treating the ten or more small sensors as pieces of a single, large sensor, Light’s camera module can add together all the photons that reach a particular location in each of the sensors to mimic larger photosites. By adding the signals, the ratio of signal to noise is greatly increased.

Light has also come up with a very clever way to mimic zoom capability using an array of fixed-focal-length (prime) lenses. Its arrays feature both wide-angle and telephoto lenses (it’s planning to have 35mm and 70mm lenses in its first smartphone-sized module) in an overlapping configuration. The telephoto lenses are mounted sideways in the module, to keep thickness to a minimum and allow for a small mirror that can be used to aim the telephoto lenses at different portions of the wide-angle view."

Light uses overlapping fields of view to emulate a single-lens optical zoom. Mirrors move the multiple 70mm lenses to create an overlapping field of view to provide effective focal lengths between 35mm and 70mm. The 35mm lenses provide a wide field of view image to assist in aligning the telephoto images.

Update: As written in comments, Imaging Resource publishes an interview with Light founder, their background and their projections into the future of mobile photography.

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Invisage publishes a new Youtube video:

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Photoxels publishes an article on Panasonic Visible Light Communication Technology. The technology only relies on smartphone software application, and does not require any camera modification. It is said to provide drastically improved data transmission speed.


The company's Youtube video promotes the technology:

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WSJ article "How Sony Makes Money Off Apple’s iPhone" shows TSR 2014 pie chart on image sensor market shares:


WSJ writes:

“Unlike memory chips, making image sensors requires craftsmanship, and that’s not something competitors can copy in the short term,” says Hideaki Miwa, analyst at Techno Systems Research Co.

According to the Tokyo research firm, Sony sold 40% of all image sensors last year, up from 35% in 2013. OmniVision’s market share was 16%, followed by 15% for Samsung. Total sales of image sensors grew to an estimated $8.65 billion last year, up more than 80% since 2009.

Some analysts say keeping up with demand might be Sony’s biggest immediate challenge. In the long run, Sony could be vulnerable because of its dependence on Apple, which sometimes has shifted suppliers with little warning.

Satoru Oyama, a semiconductor analyst at research firmIHS Inc., says Apple likely would consider buying image sensors for iPhones elsewhere if another company could match Sony’s quality and price.

“Sony can keep its position for at least a few years, but five years from now? There are no guarantees,” Mr. Oyama says.

In an interview to WSJ, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai says:

"I think one of the things we certainly pride ourselves on with our image sensors is our commitment to stay at least several years ahead of the competition and to make sure that we make the heavy R&D investments to make sure that we are there, ahead of the competition. Whether it’s a device that goes into other manufacturers’ products, or sometimes our own, if there’s innovation there, and innovation therefore means a business opportunity, that’s something I get excited about, and so do the people who run our device business."

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Consumer grade thermal cameras keep coming. After FLIR One with microbolometric imager, Seek Thermal came with Raytheon microbolometric sensor, and now Hema Imaging is closing a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Hema Vision camera utilizes 82x62 Heimann Sensor GmbH thermal sensor based on the new "thermal diode array technology." Hema Imaging writes: "Heimann Sensor GmbH is a developer and manufacturer of thermopile arrays for thermal sensing and other infrared sensors, and leads the world in thermopile array technology and now are the experts in thermal diode array technology."

It should be fairly cheap to fit the consumer camera bill, so exotic materials like CMT are probably not an option. So, I wonder how do these "thermal diodes" work?

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The post has been deleted by Sony request. Sorry for the confusion.

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Sony official image sensor distributor in Europe and North America Framos kindly sent me the update on the CCD discontinuation plans:

Dear Valued Customer,

in addition to our first SONY CCD discontinuation information please here find the latest updated and final information about the process how to make sure you can continue to buying SONY CCDs and also benefit from SONY’s extended purchasing timeline.

In the attachment you’ll find the official “SONY CCD Discontinuation Revised Plan” and the final “SONY CCD EOL Product List (as of 17 Apr 2015)”.

As a result of our customers’ and our own efforts and given feedback, SONY was able to postpone the last time shipment date to March 2026 for high running products (A-Rank) marked in yellow color in the attached list, and additionally a couple of more products have been included in the A-Rank list. Like the earlier announcement, all non-yellow marked products will have a last-time-buy/shipment date of March 2020.

In case you continue to buying a high runner product (yellow-marked), the timeline is the following:
- submit a first draft forecast by quantity, part number and year until end of Aug 2015
- submit an non-binding accurate forecast to us by end of Mar 2016
- based on this forecast SONY will produce wafers and will store these in their wafer cage (shut-down of wafer production: end of Mar 2017)
- products will be freshly assembled and tested upon customers’ orders until Mar 2026
- last order to be submitted end of Sep 2025 for shipments until Mar 2026

In case you continue to buying non-yellow marked products (“low-runner part”), the timeline is slightly different from the above and has been specified in the attached products list. Please make yourself familiar with the deadlines depending on the part number and take appropriate actions similar to the above procedure list.

Finally, if you will have submitted your forecasts in Aug 2015 and Mar 2016, FRAMOS will support all your purchase orders with a lead time of 10 - 12 weeks max (depending on SONY’s availability to ship right in time).

Our FRAMOS sales force will contact you within the next weeks to assist you and your company in the last-time-buy process and make sure your demand will be secured under all circumstances. For all questions or needs you can contact us under sales@framos.com and you’ll receive our feedback within 24 hours – guaranteed!

On behalf of FRAMOS I would like to thank you for being our customer and we do hope we can be of any help for your future new imaging projects!

Best regards,
Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Axel Krepil
Sales Director Sensor +


Axel Krepil also kindly sent me a large Excel file with the part number and discontinuation dates list. I'm still trying to figure out how to post it, as it's quite large.

Update: Thanks to DG for conversion the part list to the pictures. Framos says that the Excel file will be available on their web site soon.

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Framos publishes a nice explanation of Sony Exmor generations. Sony uses Exmore trademark for sensors with column-parallel ADC architecture with dual CDS (analog comparator auto-zero and up/down counting in digital domain). Framos infographics below explains the evolution and improvements from 1st to 6th generation of Exmor:

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PMA Newsline overviews the Northwestern University Comp Photo Lab work on fast and high resolution 3D depth imaging. The main idea of the paper "MC3D: Motion Contrast 3D Scanning" by Nathan Matsuda and Mohit Gupta, presented on April 24 at the IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography is to limit the structured light laser scanning by the area where the 2D camera detects a change. That way the static areas are not scanned. A Vimeo video explains the advantages of this approach:

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Electronics Weekly reports that strikes at ST, Crolles, France, facilities continue. The union is calling for the French government to start an investigation into ST management. Union talk about increasing "brain drain" from ST. Crolles is the location of ST fabs that manufacture image sensors, and also ST pixel design group.

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Yole Developpement publishes its thoughts on the recent Apple acquisition of LinX Imaging. Yole believes that computational imaging is moving toward the mainstream, and dual cameras will appear in many products:

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Inside AR Conference, to be held in San Francisco on May 20-21, 2015, publishes an interview with Pelican Imaging CEO Chris Pickett. Few quotes:

"I’ll be talking about how critical depth and 3D data is for the AR market.

Acquiring depth data is especially critical for AR and VR headsets, since the interactive user experience depends on knowing where objects are in space.

My gut says that AR will find its way into the mass market in the next 5 years. That prediction is also backed by market data.

I’ve seen some pretty amazing stuff from a few companies that Pelican is working with, but I can’t really talk about those yet."

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VLSI Symposium tipsheet offers a preview of two image sensor papers:

A 3D stacked CMOS Image Sensor with Global-shutter mode and high speed capturing mode:
The paper by Toru Kondo et al. from Olympus Corp. will describe a 16MP 3D stacked CMOS image sensor with pixel level interconnections using 4 million micro bumps. The two semiconductor substrates are bonded by a 7.6um pitch micro-bump array, and the storage node array is comprised on the bottom substrate to improve parasitic light sensitivity (PLS). Both a 16Mpixel global-shutter mode with a -180dB PLS and 2Mpixel 10,000fps high speed image capturing are achieved.


A 3D stacked CMOS Image Sensor with a low noise technique:
The paper by Shang-Fu Yeh, et al., of TSMC will describe an 8Mpixel 3D-stacked low noise CMOS image sensor with Conditional Correlated Multiple Sampling (CCMS) technique. This technique is proposed to solve the low frame rate issue by using multiple small-range voltage ramps. A 0.66e-rms input referred temporal readout noise is obtained with a 5-times CCMS technique, and also both thermal noise and the random telegraph signal (RTS) noise can be
reduced by using CCMS technique.

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Wikileaks has published a number of stolen Sony Pictures documents, some of them talking about cinematic cameras image sensor development. The undated "Next Generation Camera" talks about Red camera threat and a development of the new 8K image sensor with modified Bayer pattern and HDR:


No details on next generation CFA pattern is given. A leaked 2011 document talks about the older Q67 pattern that Sony has been using in its CineAlta cameras since 2010. Another leaked 2011 Sony document talks about a workflow based on the F65 camera:


According to yet another Sony 2011 document on the next generation cameras, it looks like global shutter is placed high in the list of the sensor requirements.

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Tech.eu: Stockholm, Sweden-based eye-tracking technology company Tobii IPO today gives it a market cap of SEK 2.1 billion (about $244M). Tobii says the offering was over-subscribed multiple times. Tobii will receive gross proceeds of approximately SEK 400 million ($46.5M) through the issue of new shares as part of the IPO, before a possible exercise of the over-allotment option.

The company has about 570 employees across its offices in Sweden, the US, China, Germany and other countries.

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Imaging Resource: New Pentax K-3 II DSLR features Ricoh pixel shift resolution enhancement that removes the need for Bayer demosaicing, first presented at CP+ a month ago.

Pentax IS actuator shifts the sensor by 1 pixel in 4 directions. "The result is an image which has full color information at every pixel location -- and thus improved resolution and a greater resistance to false color artifacts -- but only a relatively modest increase in file size...

As an added bonus, images shot in the Pixel Shift Resolution mode should also have a cleaner, tighter noise pattern. The reason for this is twofold. First, since multiple exposures are involved, noise can be averaged out across those exposures. Secondly, in a Bayer-filtered sensor, two out of three colors at each pixel location must be interpolated (read: guessed) from the values of surrounding pixels. When that happens, noise from adjacent pixels is likewise spread across their neighbors, resulting in a less film-like and blotchier, more objectionable noise pattern. With full color information at each pixel, a Pixel Shift Resolution shot's high ISO grain pattern is finer, and we're guessing easier to clean up post-capture, too."


Pentax Youtube video calls this mode "Pixel Shift Resolution". It's somewhat similar to one appeared in the previous Pentax DSLR model, but then it used to be a high frequency 500Hz vibration, whereas now it's said to provide a higher resolution for static objects:

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PWC report "A decade of unprecedented growth: China’s impact on the semiconductor industry, 2014 update," dated by January 2015, ranks Galaxycore #10 on revenue basis among Chinese semiconductor companies. Other image sensor vendors in China, such as Superpix and Brigates have not make it even in the list of 50 largest companies.


Nomura report "Greater China Semi" places Galaxycore at #8 among semiconductor design houses in China:

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Finnegan: Ziptronix has lost its 2010 lawsuit against Omnivision and TSMC on infringement on its 9 patents on direct wafer bonding.

"In Ziptronix, Inc. v. OmniVision Technologies, Inc. a Taiwanese contract manufacturer and its U.S. subsidiary moved for summary judgment of no infringement because the allegedly infringing activity occurred only in Taiwan, with the exception of negotiations and contracting in the United States. The district court granted summary judgment, finding that even if negotiation and contracting occurred in the United States, there could be no direct infringement under U.S. patent law because the contracts contemplated delivery and performance to take place solely abroad. Additionally, the patent holder failed to present evidence that the Taiwanese manufacturer's customer, OmniVision, committed an underlying act of direct infringement. Thus, the court concluded, the Taiwanese manufacturer and its U.S. subsidiary did not commit or induce infringing acts "within the United States."

For those who skilled in legal language and logic, the full text of California Court summary judgement from Oct. 21, 2014 can be downloaded here. More discussions on patent law gray areas, apparently involved in this case, can be found in another Finnegan article.

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Ikegami has collaborated NHK to develop an 8K UHDTV camera, the "SHK-810", and achieved significant size reduction and light-weight design for field and live production, which can be operated at the same level as the current broadcast camera systems. The camera employs a single 33MP Super 35 CMOS sensor, achieving 4,000TVL horizontal and vertical resolution. The color filter on the sensor uses the dual-green SHV color arrangement.

According to the roadmap of Japan Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), test-broadcast of 4K/8K by BS satellite television will start in Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and 8K on-air broadcast will start as soon as possible by 2018 in Japan. The 4K/8K broadcasting is targeted at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Per MIC, by the year 2020, 4K/8K broadcasting should be shared by public viewing points in Japan, and 4K/8K television sets should be widespread in the consumer market by that time.

Ikegami SHK-810

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WSJ, Bloomberg: Sony revises upward its profit forecast for its fiscal year ended on March 31, 2015. One of the reasons for revision is higher than expected image sensor sales. The final yearly results will be reported on April 30.

“The demand for front-facing camera modules is going through the roof, because everyone wants to take high-quality selfies, and that doubles the market size for Sony,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, a manager of Japanese equity sales at BGC Partners Inc. in Singapore. “The auto segment of the market is also beginning to boom. Cars potentially may have more than five modules per car.”

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Sharp's March 2015 catalog reveals new high end products. The company presents RJ5DY1BA0LT, a 1-inch 13MP CMOS sensor capable of 4K 60fps video:


One can also buy an off-the-shelf 21MP camera module with 4K 30fps video and F2.0 lens:


Also, Sharp greatly expands its CCD product line, announcing no less than 19 new CCDs, and another 4 marked "under development."

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VLSI Symposia to be held in June 2015 in Kyoto, Japan publishes its advance program. Few notable papers on image sensors:

VLSI Circuit Symposium has 5 image sensor papers. Probably, the most interesting one comes from Olympus:

A 3D Stacked CMOS Image Sensor with 16Mpixel Global-Shutter Mode and 2Mpixel 10000fps Mode Using 4 Million Interconnections
T. Kondo, Y. Takemoto, K. Kobayashi, M. Tsukimura, N. Takazawa, H. Kato, S. Suzuki, J. Aoki, H. Saito, Y. Gomi, S. Matsuda and Y. Tadaki, Olympus, Japan

A 16Mpixel 3D stacked CMOS image sensor with pixel level interconnections using 4,008,960 micro bumps at a 7.6μm pitch, which set no layout restriction and causes no harm to sensor characteristics, was developed to achieve both a 16Mpixel global-shutter mode with a -180dB PLS and 2Mpixel 10000fps high speed image capturing mode.

The second most interesting paper is one from Tohoku University:

A Linear Response Single Exposure CMOS Image Sensor with 0.5e- Readout Noise and 76ke- Full Well Capacity
S. Wakashima, F. Kusuhara, R. Kuroda and S. Sugawa, Tohoku Univ., Japan

A linear response single exposure CMOS image sensor approaching to the photon countable sensitivity and a high full well capacity is developed using lateral overflow integration capacitor architecture with dual gain column amplifiers, small floating diffusion capacitance and low noise in-pixel source follower signal readout technologies. The fabricated 5.5 um pitch 360H x 1680V pixel prototype image sensor exhibited 240 μV/e- conversion gain with 76 ke- FWC resulting in 0.5 erms readout noise and 104 dB dynamic range under room temperature operation.

Image Sensor/Digital Logic 3D Stacked Module Featuring Inductive Coupling Channels for High Speed/Low-Noise Image Transfer
M. Ikebe*, D. Uchida*, Y. Take**, M. Someya*, S. Chikuda*, K. Matsuyama*, T. Asai*, T. Kuroda** and M. Motomura*, *Hokkaido Univ. and **Keio Univ., Japan

This paper proposes 3D stacked module consisting of image sensor and digital logic dies connected through inductive coupling channels. Evaluation of a prototype module revealed radiation noise from the inductive coils to the image sensor is less than 0.4-LSB range along with ADC code, i.e., negligible. Aiming at high frame rate image sensor/processing module exploiting this attractive off-die interface, we also worked on resolving another throughput-limiter, namely power consuming TDC used in column parallel ADCs. Novel intermittent TDC operation scheme presented in this paper can reduce its power dissipation 57% from conventional ones.

A 0.66e-rms Temporal-Readout-Noise 3D-Stacked CMOS Image Sensor with Conditional Correlated Multiple Sampling (CCMS) Technique
S.-F. Yeh, K.-Y. Chou, H.-Y. Tu, C. Y.-P. Chao and F.-L. Hsueh, TSMC, Taiwan

A conditional correlated multiple sampling (CCMS) technique for low noise CMOS image sensor (CIS) is proposed to reduce noise and address low frame rate issue caused by the conventional correlated multiple sampling (CMS) technique. An 8Mpixel 3D-stacked CIS with 1.1um pixel pitch is designed and verified. Measurement results show this technique can achieve 0.66erms at 36.1 kHz A/D sampling rate per pixel with analog gain at 16 and 5-times multiple sampling. The resulting DNL is within -0.49/+0.45LSB.

A 0.4V Self-Powered CMOS Imager with 140dB Dynamic Range and Energy Harvesting
A. Y.-C. Chiou and C.-C. Hsieh, National Tsing Hua Univ., Taiwan

This PWM imager operates at a lowest reported supply 0.4V with a 0.42x smaller pixel size, 1.5x larger fill factor, 0.58 smaller random noise, and 3x better iFoM than previous work. With proposed dual-exposure extended-counting (DEEC) scheme, the prototype achieves a high dynamic range of 140dB with a 58dB boost. Optical energy harvesting (OEH) design is implemented to generate 60.3pW per lux per mm2 and 1.28x higher efficient than current design. A self-powered imager is demonstrated with 15fps under 100klux.

VLSI Technology Symposium has one image sensor paper:

Energy Efficient 1-Transistor Active Pixel Sensor (APS) with FD SOI Tunnel FET
N. Dagtekin and A. M. Ionescu, EPFL, Switzerland

This paper presents the first energy efficient highly compact concept of active pixel sensor built with a single partially-gated tunnel FET (TFET). Experimental results show that the transistor characteristics of the investigated TFETs are nonlinearly modulated by optical excitation and an optical gain is reported for the first time. A memory effect is observed and exploited when the back-gate is used as a secondary gate to control charge storing mechanism in the body, similarly to back gate illuminated photodiode pixels. Compared to CMOS, 1T-TFET pixels offer high sensitivity (detection limit < 2pW/μm2 in visible light), low power operation, improved temperature stability and high compactness (1T architecture with pixel size of ~10x1μm2 in this work).

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Yole Developpement's recent presentation "More than Moore market and technology trends" forecasts the future of image sensor industry:

Stacked BSI = wafers connected by TSV Hybryd BSI = stacked sensor with Cu-Cu hybrid bonding

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GlobeNewsWire: The Shareholders Foundation, Inc. reveals its version of the story in a class action lawsuit against OmniVision:

"The plaintiff alleged that OmniVision allegedly failed to disclose that it had lost its lucrative, high-profile, and exclusive contract with Apple Inc, that competition was eroding its "leadership position" in the smartphone industry, that delays in the development of its 8-megapixel product line were threatening its prospects, and that it lacked a reasonable basis for its statements about its bright prospects in the smartphone market.

On August 25, 2011, OmniVision announced its results for the fiscal first quarter of 2012 and provided guidance for the fiscal second quarter of 2012. OmniVision also disclosed delays in the production of its new 8-megapixel product line.

The plaintiff claimed that based on OmniVision's guidance, analysts recognized that OmniVision would not be the exclusive producer of camera components for Apple's iPhone 4S set for release in the fall of 2011. The plaintiff claimed that on that day the iPhone 4S became available for sale experts determined that based on a logo stamped on the inside of the camera sensor that Sony--and not OmniVision -- had supplied the CMOS sensor for the iPhone 4S.

After more than three years of litigation the settlement was announced in March 2015. The settlement provides a total recovery of $12.5 million in cash for certain OmniVision investors."

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EETimes quotes Tractica market research forecasting that wearable camera shipments will increase from 5.6M in 2014 to 30.6M units annually by 2020, representing a CAGR of 33%.

“Wearable camera adoption will be strongest in areas where there is a clear and specific use case or context in which the camera is used,” says research director Aditya Kaul. “While GoPro is driving the market for sports and adventure enthusiasts, we expect usage of consumer lifelogging cameras like those from Narrative to mature over time to capture specific moments and support video streaming. The public safety sector is also experiencing growth in the adoption of body-worn cameras for police officers provided by companies like Taser, Vievu, and Digital Ally. In addition, enterprise users are experimenting with applications like user experience research in retail and hospitality.”

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GlobeNewsWire: TowerJazz and China-based Gpixel announce what they call the world's first scientific BSI CMOS image sensor, GSENSE400-BSI, manufactured using TowerJazz's TS18IS process. The new sensor is aimed to spectrometry, biometric, fluorescence, surveillance, industrial inspection, forensic, and astronomy applications.

GSENSE400-BSI features:

• 11um pixel pitch
• 2048x2048 resolution
• extremely low dark current: 1e-/p/s at 0C , 0.03e-/p/s at -50C
• read noise as low as 1.3e-
• linear full well charge as high as 91Ke-
• DR of 96dB
• QE: 74%@280nm or 90%@400nm
• Frame rate: 48fps@STD, 24fps@HDR

Gpixel's BSI scientific CMOS sensor features very high sensitivity from 270nm – 300nm for its UV-optimized version, and from 300nm – 400nm for its VIS-optimized version:


"We have been working with TowerJazz since the start of Gpixel, because of its unprecedented leadership in CMOS image sensor technology," said Xinyang Wang, Founder & CEO, Gpixel, Inc. "This latest BSI sensor's performance has exceeded my expectation. I believe this is one of the most unique CMOS products currently available in the market and will create very serious competition with many existing BSI CCD sensors."

"We are very pleased to see the success of Gpixel in the market. We have known Dr. Wang for many years and have full confidence in his ability to grow his company to become a major high end CMOS image sensor supplier," said Avi Strum, VP & GM, CMOS Image Sensor Business Unit, TowerJazz. "Gpixel is unique in the Chinese market as it concentrates on the high end market which fits very well with our strategy."

The UV-optimized and VIS-optimized GSENSE400-BSI are starting sampling immediately. These two products are planned to be in production in Q3 2015.

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