Archives for July 2016

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Samsung patent application US20160211306 "Image sensors" by Hyuk Soon Choi, Jung Bin Yun, Jungchak Ahn presents a number of different ideas on light shielding of a charge storage node SD in BSI global shutter pixels:

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e2v publishes a number of videos of its imaging division track record:

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Sony quarterly report and forecast reflect Kumamoto earthquake results:


The company PR separates Semiconductors from the battery business (to be sold to Murata) and updates on its status:

"Sales decreased 22.9% year-on-year (a 14% decrease on a constant currency basis) to 144.4 billion yen (1,402 million U.S. dollars). This decrease was primarily due to a significant decrease in sales of image sensors, reflecting the impact of a decrease in image sensor production due to the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes, lower demand for image sensors for mobile products, and the impact of foreign exchange rates. Sales to external customers decreased 21.4% year-on-year.

Operating loss of 43.5 billion yen (423 million U.S. dollars) was recorded, compared to operating income of 32.7 billion yen recorded in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year. This significant deterioration was due to the impact of the above-mentioned decrease in sales, the 20.3 billion yen (197 million U.S. dollars) impairment charge against long-lived assets for camera modules, net charges of 13.6 billion yen (132 million U.S. dollars) for expenses resulting from the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes and the negative impact of foreign exchange rates. During the current quarter, there was a 8.2 billion yen negative impact from foreign exchange rate fluctuations."

The Semicondustor business updated forecast for Sony fiscal year ending on March 31, 2017: "Sales are expected to be lower than the May forecast primarily due to lower-than-expected image sensor sales reflecting the impact of foreign exchange rates, partially offset by a faster-than-expected recovery from the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes. Operating income is expected to be lower than the May forecast mainly due to the negative impact of foreign exchange rates, partially offset by the favorable impact of the above-mentioned recovery."

Sharp too reports its quarterly earnings showing camera module business shrink, although it retains its position as the company's second largest product group:

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Reportedly, Ingenic Semiconductor, a small public company in Beijing, is in the process of acquiring Omnivision, and, possibly, Superpix. The deal is assumed to be a reverse merger where Omnivision gets access to Shenzhen stock market under Ingenic stock code 300223.

The Omnivision deal has been reported as Ingenic Semi's official announcement at the Chinese-language EastMoney site.

Thanks to XW for the link!

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SeekingAlpha's Samsung Q2 2016 earnings call transcript has a little update on image sensor sales: "Second quarter earnings improved quarter on quarter due to ...the increased sales of high megapixel [inaudible] megapixel and above CMOS Image Sensor in China. ...In the third quarter, we expect ...the sales of CMOS Image Sensor in China market to be stay solid."

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e2v publishes Youtube videos of its 1.3MP, 2MP and WVGA sensors from Sapphire family:

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Xiaomi Redmi Pro smartphone features a dual rear camera: a 13MP Sony IMX258 is combined with an unnamed 5MP Samsung sensor "to aid depth of field recording, real-time background blur:"

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SeekingAlpha: ST reports its Q2 2016 earnings. The CEO Carlo Bozotti and other executives talk about the imaging business results:

"Let me speak briefly of our Imaging Product Division which is reported in the line others. Here, we had strong sequential increase in sales, thanks to our Time-of-Flight specialized image sensors entering multiple smartphone models, 10 new flagship smartphones in Q2 alone. Among these, we can mention that Huawei P9 Plus and Honor V8. And we continue to see a very good momentum.

And the other good opportunity is that in the imaging and particularly in our specialty image sensors with the Time-of-Flight technology, we see momentum and we are starting also new opportunities, and this is another important contributor of our sequential growth expectation."

And then comes a question on Apple cooperation rumors:

Veysel Taze - ODDO SEYDLER BANK AG:

"Basically, not much questions left. But one will be interesting around your image sensor business. There were recently rumors that one of the North American smartphone OEMs is ramping a new R&D in France, a fab for camera modules and image sensors. And I was wondering if that's an option for you? I know you discontinued the camera module business, but is that an opportunity, or yeah?"

Jean-Marc Chery - COO:

"...first of all, I confirm that ST decided to discontinue the camera module, the commodity camera module, so we have no intent to come back in this camera module. So we are focusing on specialized imaging sensor and especially our Time-of-Flight technology where we see a very good traction, especially with a nice product called Ewok (???) where we have mainly Asia Pac and especially in China smartphone opportunities. And this is where we are focusing and focus a lot on that."

Another interesting question:

Janardan N. Menon - Liberum Capital Ltd.

"Just a couple of quick follow-ups from me. One is on your imaging business, the Time-of-Flight sensors. If I remember right, you've made a loss of about $80 million last year on the imaging side. I was just wondering, given the very strong growth that you've seen so far in the first half of this year and what you expect to see through the second half based on your design wins, would you be able to sort of almost eliminate that loss by the end of this year or is that going to be work in progress into next year as well?"

Carlo Bozotti - President & CEO:

"To respond to the first question, the answer is yes, and this is certainly an area where we can turnaround because we have the result of the camera modules and the commodity that was also linked to certain needs in terms of fab loading. And this now is done. So, it was a massive R&D effort. It was an important R&D effort with very limited sales. So now sales are coming and, of course, there is a very significant improvement."

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Panasonic image sensors have design wins in mainstream smartphones. Chinese UMi Vienna and Super smartphones use 13MP Panasonic MN34172 sensor:

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KB ViTA publishes a PAL-format night scene video with new Sony ISX017 Starvis sensor. The video was acquired through the imagers's analog output at 1/50s exposure time, with 25mm F1.2 lens:



ISX017 has not been officially announced yet, but there is quite a lot of info about it on the Net:


Thanks to AB for the info!

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e2v publishes a Youtube video on its imaging division capabilities:

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Nikkei: Nissan ProPilot automatic driving technology will be used for the Serena minivan to be released in late August 2016. The technology supports automatic driving on a single lane of a motorway. The ProPilot uses a monocular camera attached to the windshield (inside the car). The camera recognizes vehicles on the road, white lines, measures the distance to a preceding vehicle and detect the position of the user's vehicle in the lane. The accelerator, brakes and steering are controlled based on those data.

Propilot display

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Korean-language BusinessPost and JAFCO-Asia report that image sensor chip-scale package maker OptoPACK has been listed on KOSDAQ. The company has filed a 31.7 billion won last year's sales (~$28M) and an operating loss of 30 million won (~$26K).

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RoadToVR quotes Magic Leap CMO Brian Wallace saying that the company is working on an AR headset that’s portable, lightweight, and can be worn all day. He further said that the aim is to completely replace smartphones someday.

Talking about the AR devices, James Mackie publishes a Youtube video claiming that Microsoft Hololens is "the absolute gamechanger."

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Yole Développement and its partner CIOE announce the 1st Executive Infrared Imaging Forum: From Niche to Large Volume Applications. Organized by Yole and hosted by CIOE, this event will take place on September 8, 2016 in Shenzhen, alongside the 18th China International Optoelectronic Expo 2016. The Forum agenda:

• Thermal Imager with Microbolometer for Smartphone: Evolution & Comparison on the last Technologies Trends
  Sylvain Hallereau, Project Manager, System Plus Consulting
• Molded, Wafer Level Optics for High Volume Applications
  John Franks, Technical Director, Umicore Electro Optic Materials
• Fabless Development of CMOS Micro-bolometer FPA for High Performance Consumer Application
  Kwyro Lee, CTO of Sirius Inc. & Prof. in School of EECS, KAIST, Daejon, Korea
• NETD, uncooled FPA, Electro-Optic characterization, TWS, SmartIRTM
  Frédéric Mathieu, Chief Operating Officer & Project Manager, Device-ALab
• Thermodiode Infrared Technology for Mass Market Applications
  Andreas Krauss, Product Management Sensor Components (AE/PRM-S) , Robert Bosch GmbH
• Keynote - TBD
  Stuart Klapper, Autoliv
• Uncooled IR Imaging Market Perspectives
  Eric Mounier, Senior Analyst, Yole Développement
• Tracking Illuminator: Novel Instrument Combining Thermal IR Detection with VIS Illumination
  Hubert Jerominek, INO
• ULIS inside "Smart Buildings"
  Cyrille Trouilleau, Product Manager, ULIS
• Wuhan GST's very Low Cost Uncooled Infared Detector Development
  Gao Jianfei, Detector Center Director, GUIDE
• Thermal and Hyperspectral Imaging solutions for Integrators
  Eric Guyot, Director French Office and IR Cameras Product Line Manager, Telops

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FBK publishes a LFoundry's Antonio Venezia short talk on CIS production challenges in EU Supertwin project on entangled photon imaging (part 1, part 2):

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Adimec interviews Poorya Hosseini of MIT to discuss the use of extreme high full well capacity camera in interferometric microscopy:

"There has been some debate on what typically limits the sensitivity of the phase measurements in interferometric microscopy and holographic microscopy that has been a few nm in terms of optical path length. We hypothesized that photon shot noise sets the current limit rather than other noise sources such as mechanical vibrations or power fluctuations of the illumination source. After some theoretical calculations and showing shot noise is indeed the limiting factor, we needed a tool to see how far we can push shot noise down before we hit the mechanical limits. This is only possible when you can collect a huge number of photons in a short period of time using this camera, and of course lots of light."

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According to a report from Tractica, the worldwide market for 3D imaging hardware and software will grow from $3.2b in 2014 to $24.9b in 2024 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23%. The consumer and mobile and the automotive markets were the two largest in 2014, accounting for $1.2 billion and $1.0 billion, respectively. The robotics and industrial market will sport the highest growth rate of 26.9% among all the application markets to become worth $3.9 billion by 2024. Overall, the consumer and mobile market will continue to be the largest market for 3D imaging technology, accounting for $10.1 billion in 2024 and growing at a CAGR of 23.3%:

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Leap Motion CTO and co-founder David Holz shares his 1.5-hour long AltspaceVR presentation on imaging in VR applications:

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EETimes publishes TechInsights reverse engineering findings comparing Sony and Samsung 12MP camera modules extracted from Galaxy S7 smartphones:

Sony IMX260

Samsung S5K2L1SX

Few quotes:

"Sony had used TSVs in their earlier CMOS image sensors and we had expected the same for the IMX260. But we don’t see them, as they have been replaced by a direct wafer bonding process that we will discuss later.

The Samsung CMOS image sensor has arrays of TSVs along its perimeter and these are used to make the electrical connections to the underlying ASIC.

Simply joining the two wafers together will allow Van der Waal forces (hydrogen bonding) to hold the wafers together, but this bond strength is insufficient for the task. High temperature anneals can convert these bonds to covalent bonding, but high temperature anneals can cause problems with thermal mismatches between the materials making up the two wafers. This is where Ziptronix’s 7,109,092 (‘092) patent comes into play. This patent describes a method for subjecting the wafer’s oxide surface with a fluorinating treatment to promote the covalent bonding of the two wafers in a room temperature process.

This wafer bonding process is likely done prior to the backside thinning of the image sensor wafer that might be about 150 µm thick, as is the control ASIC. The two wafers would brought into alignment using IR microscopes to see through the wafers to their respective alignment marks. This process has yielded a misalignment of the image sensor’s metal 6 pad and the control ASICs metal 8 pad of less than 0.25 µm."

Samsung uses arrays of through silicon vias to connect its S5k2L1SX image sensor to its underlying ASIC. Figure 7 shows a series of Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) arranged on an approximately 5 µm x 8 µm grid pattern. The TSVs are the dark oval shapes seen at the center of each grid point.

The TSVs connecting the image sensor die to the metal 7 traces of the control ASIC was formed after the two dies are affixed to each other, and after the image sensor die had undergone its backside thinning, using a TSV last process. The TSV metallization appears to be tungsten with probably a titanium nitride barrier and possibly titanium adhesion layers.

Using TSVs to electrically connect the image sensor die to the ASIC certainly gets the job done, but at the cost of the added real estate needed for the TSV arrays."

Sony IMX260 Wafer Bonding Surfaces

Top Surface of Samsung S5K2L1SX with TSV Array

Samsung S5K2L1SX TSVs

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Varioptic publishes a Youtube video showing that its liquid lens performance is quite insensitive to a vibration:



An older video shows how its electrowetting liquid lens operation:

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Analog Devices presents its occupancy vision module reference design based on a smart image sensor that reduces the volume of data transferred to a Blackfin DSP. It sounds like the image sensor is based on the acquired Swiss Snap Sensor startup's technology:

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PRNewswire: Meizu MX6 phone features Sony new 12MP 1/2.9-inch IMX386 rear camera sensor with 1.25um pixel. Meizu says its quality is similar to the one in Galaxy S7 camera. "The high-density phase detection pixel embedded in the sensor brings enhanced focus accuracy and speed," says Meizu. The camera has 6-element F2.0 lens and achieves the autofocus speed of 0.2s. An upgraded ISP is said to achieve the "camera speed of 319ms."

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Digitimes quotes Chinese-language Commercial Times saying "Pixart is expected to complete tape-out of chips supporting VR (virtual reality) technology by year-end 2016, said the paper, adding that the chips will support next-generation Nintendo NX gaming machines."

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PointGrey publishes a video on what it means to manufacture 250,000 machine vision cameras a year:

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I missed it at the time when ISSCC published its 2016 Trends presentation:

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Xilinx publishes a Youtube video demoing embedded vision capabilities of its Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC:

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Macrumors reports that Apple is to open a research lab in Grenoble, France focused on developing image sensors, according to French newspaper Dauphiné Libéré, with details posted in iPhon.fr.

Apple is said to have a team of dozen researchers and engineers working on imaging R&D for more than a year at Minatec, in collaboration with STMicro. Apple plans to have approximately 30 engineers in the new research lab, which will occupy about 800 sq. m.


Thanks to RP for the link!

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