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The Electrical Engineer blog compares image quality of Nokia Lumia 1020 based on 1.1um pixels with Nikon D800e DSLR having 4.9um pixel size. As expected, D800 is better, but in many cases the images are quite comparable - amazing job on Nokia side.

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Geek.com publishes Pelican Imaging demo shown at the Qualcomm Uplinq conference:

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EETimes reports that Rumbus presented the world's smallest camera at Trillion Sensors Summit being held in Stanford University these days. So far Medigus and Awaiba made the smallest sensors for endoscopy. Medigus' 1mm2 imager is said to cost about $1,000.

Rambus presented a lens-free camera that is said to be significantly cheaper and smaller than these tiniest imagers. The company created an 80um diffractive grating from which it was able to reconstruct a poor but visible image of the Mona Lisa. The technique requires significant computation to deliver even a blurry image, however the company sees an initial opportunity to enter the market as a thermal camera. The Mona Lisa picture required computation on the order of 350 million multiple-accumulates.

Rambus got its first experimental results back in August and it aims to publish the results soon.


Update: The presentation slides can be downloaded here.

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While Sony and Panasonic bet on 4K ecosystem to give a boost to their imaging businesses, Consumer Reports lab compares HD TV quality with the new 4K systems and finds the improvement is quite marginal: "As long as Ultra HD TVs command a premium price over comparably sized HD sets, it's hard to justify the extra expense, especially given the reality that UHD's advantages over regular HD will be lost in most typical home-viewing situations."

Meanwhile, EETimes India writes that Panasonic is going to cut 7,000 jobs in its semiconductor unit and is in talks to sell some of its fabs to TowerJazz. Panasonic denies these reports, saying that nothing has been decided yet. Panasonic strategy presentation from Sept 18, 2013 confirms that the semiconductor business' future is unknown, although nothing specific is said on image sensors part of it:



Update: AFP publishes more details on Panasonic semiconductor rumors.

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Image Sensors Conference to be held in London, UK on March 18-20, 2014, announces latest additions to its already impressive list of confirmed speakers:

• Patrick Denny, Senior Research Engineer, Valeo
• Shoji Kawahito, Brookman Labs / Shizouka University
• Laurent Jamet, Co-Founder and Director Business Development at ISORG
• Piet De Moor, Project Leader for Image Sensors at IMEC
• Juha Alakarhu, Head of Imaging Technology at Nokia
• Peter Seitz, Professor, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne at EPFL
• Prof Takeharu Goji Etoh, Ritshumeikan University
• Jörg Kunze, Senior Electronics Developer and Lead Architect Technology & Innovation, Basler

There is also a new workshop confirmed "A Million Images per Second and Beyond" by Renato Turchetta, CMOS Sensor Design Group Leader at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. (Another, earlier confirmed workshop is led by Albert Theuwissen).

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Andrew Sarangan, Professor & Associate Director of the Electro-Optics Graduate Program at University of Dayton, OH talks about the University's image sensor works. Some highlights:

• Making InSb hybrid sensors cheaper
• How to extend Si detector sensitivity to 6um wavelength
• Polarization and extended UV sensing, and more:

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STMicro published Q3 2013 report with a list of milestones achieved in the quarter. There are few imaging-related ones:

• Started deliveries of a new high-value dedicated Image Signal Processor to a leading consumer brand.
• Sampled and demonstrated to automotive market leaders a new high-performance Image Signal Processor and image-sensor chipset with advanced features for automotive and security applications.
• Announced a new family of gyroscopes specifically optimized for image stabilization on mobile phones and cameras.

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SeekingAlpha's transcript of SMIC Q3'13 earnings call mentions a strong growth in image sensors:

T.Y. Chiu, CEO:

"In ...areas such as the CIS, and we believe that -- and we already are seeing a very, very strong growth in the customer that we have, that they are becoming the dominant players in some of these mid to low-end CIS. And as they expand into the high-end market, I think they will be doing very well. So I think for us, our strategy is to pick the right customers and work with them, and serve them as they need."

"Over the next few years we anticipate differentiated products such as CIS ...to transition to more advanced nodes."

"For the CIS, actually we are actually at, you know, 0.13 and working on the 12-inch 65nm."

Eric Chen, Daiwa Securities:

"Okay. For your CIS clients, the 65nm process you talked about, that's for the domestic client or for the US client, foreigner client?"

T.Y. Chiu, CEO:

"We are actually having a lot of new clients working with us, so both domestic and overseas clients."

Eric Chen, Daiwa Securities:

"Uh-huh. I see. But in terms of the growth, it's mainly from the foreigner client, right? Is that right?"

T.Y. Chiu, CEO:

"In terms of the -- this year's growth? Are you talking about this year's growth?"

Eric Chen, Daiwa Securities:

"I'm talking about the next year growth."

T.Y. Chiu, CEO:

"I think that it could be both. It could be both, yeah."

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Business Wire: Edwin Roks, Teledyne-DALSA EVP and GM in Holland, is promoted to become the whole Teledyne CTO. Edwin has been in image sensor industry for a long time, starting from Philips Semiconductor, then joined DALSA when it acquired Philips image sensor business.

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A newly announced Pentax K-3 DSLR features "the world’s first AA filter simulator, which reproduces the effects created by an optical AA filter. By applying microscopic vibrations to the CMOS sensor during exposure, the K-3 minimizes false color and moiré. You have a choice of three settings to obtain the desired effect: “TYPE 1” to attain the optimum balance between image resolution and moiré; “TYPE 2” to prioritize moiré compensation; and “OFF” to prioritize image resolution. Thanks to this innovative feature, the K-3 offers the benefits of two completely different cameras — the high-resolution images assured by an AA-filter-free model, and minimized false color and moiré assured by an AA-filter-equipped one. You can switch the AA filter effect on and off as you wish."

A Youtube video shows how it works:

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PRNewswire, EETimes: SMIC announces the formation of SMIC's Center for Vision, Sensors and 3DIC (CVS3D). CVS3D consolidates SMIC's R&D and manufacturing capabilities for silicon-based sensors, TSV and other middle-end wafer process (MEWP) technologies. MEWP technology has led to significant advancements in CMOS image sensors, 3D stacked devices, and high performance TSV-based 2.5D and 3D systems-in-package (SiP). The formation of CVS3D is a strategic step in SMIC's technology differentiation strategy as SMIC expands its technology offerings to a global customer base. One of SMIC customers is said to be already in production using CVS3D's technology offerings, a few customers have multiple additional products in qualification.

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EETimes published a nice story saying that when interpolating an image data, one needs to care not only about the interpolated data continuity, but also about the continuity of its first derivative. A discontinuity in the first derivative may create visible artifacts. The second derivative can be discontinuous, though.

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Korea IT News reports that Samsung LSI and Sony are competing for a primary sensor supplier status for a 16MP sensor in the oncoming Sansung Galaxy S5 phone. Sony used to have an absolute power on 13MP CIS for smartphones market. However, in the second half of this year, Samsung System LSI is said to be catching up with Sony at a high speed.

Samsung is said to keep its existing suppliers for Galaxy S5 camera module, lens and AF actuator, while its System LSI Division and Sony are fiercely competing over a spot as a CIS main supplier. It is reported that Sony is currently proposing an exclusive distributorship contract for 16MP CIS for a set period of time with Samsung Electronics’ Wireless Business Division. Sony is said to focus solely on Samsung Electronics’ smartphones for its CIS business. Meanwhile, Samsung System LSI has started mass production of 8MP sensor for smartphones and is sampling 13MP and 16MP sensors. System LSI Division plans to increase 300mm CIS wafer input from 4,000 wafers a month to 8,000 in its Giheung Plant. With the increased production, a greater cost reduction effect is also anticipated.

"We have no reason not to work with Sony or System LSI Division as long as they can prove their 16 million pixel CIS performance and mass-production capacities," explained an insider from Samsung Electronics’ Wireless Business Division. "Things will take shape around the year end because even a camera module sample test has not been completed yet."

Update: Samsung Q3 2013 earnings report forecasts "high-pixel image sensor demand to increase" in Q4 2013.

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Post has been removed by IMEC's request. IMEC is still finalizing the video demo and would like to change some part of the content in the coming days.

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Sony channel on Vimeo started to publish teardown videos of its various products. The one below talks about a complex design of the recently announced QX100 lens-style camera:

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Qualcomm publishes its Snapdragon 800 still imaging capabilities promo:

and a video capabilities promo:  

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Qualcomm Media publishes Purnam Sheth, Pelican Imaging' VP of Engineering, video story on computational challenges of multi-array camera:

 

Another video at Qualcomm's site presents Arcsoft's NightHawk low-light video capture software that improves video in poor lighting conditions. "By only using the CPU, NightHawk would not be able to run in real time since the frame rate would be too low, not to mention that the power consumption would be too high. By using the CPU, GPU, DSP and ISP, ArcSoft claims that the NightHawk application is able to run in real time with more than 30% power savings."

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Extreme UV photolithoraphy challenges extend to image sensor design for mask and wafer inspection. KLA-Tencor's patent application US20130264481 "Back-illuminated sensor with boron layer" by Chern Jehn-Huar, Ehsani Ali R., Delgado Gildardo, Brown David L., Chuang Yung-Ho Alex, and Fielden John gives a nice overview of these challenges:

"Inspection systems are typically in use 24 hours per day with only short stoppages, the detectors are exposed to large doses of radiation after only a few months of operation.

A photon with a vacuum wavelength of 250 nm has energy of approximately 5 eV. The bandgap of silicon dioxide is about 10 eV. Although it would appear that such wavelength photons cannot be absorbed by silicon dioxide, silicon dioxide as grown on a silicon surface must have some dangling bonds at the interface with the silicon because the silicon dioxide structure cannot perfectly match that of the silicon crystal. Furthermore, because the single dioxide is amorphous, there are likely also some dangling bonds within the material. In practice, there will be a non-negligible density of defects and impurities within the oxide, as well as at the interface to underlying semiconductor, that can absorb photons with deep UV wavelengths, particularly those shorter than about 250 nm in wavelength. Furthermore, under high radiation flux density, two high-energy photons may arrive near the same location within a very short time interval (nanoseconds or picoseconds), which can lead to electrons being excited to the conduction band of the silicon dioxide by two absorption events in rapid succession or by two-photon absorption. EUV photons have very high energies (13.5 nm in wavelength corresponds to photon energy close to 92 eV) and are capable of breaking silicon-oxygen bonds as well as strongly interacting with defects and contaminants in the oxide. Electron and charged-particle detectors typically have to detect electrons or charged particles with energies of a few hundred eV or higher. Energies greater than 10 eV can readily break silicon-oxygen bonds.

As indicated above, high-energy photons and particles can break bonds and ionize atoms in a silicon dioxide layer. Because silicon dioxide is a good insulator, free electrons created in the silicon dioxide may have lifetimes of ms or longer before recombining. Some of these electrons may migrate into the semiconductor material. These electrons create electric fields within the silicon dioxide and between the silicon dioxide and semiconductor. These electric fields can cause electrons created in the semiconductor by absorption of photons to migrate to the surface of the semiconductor and recombine, thereby resulting in lost signal and reduced detector quantum efficiency. Near continuous use of the instrument means that there may be little, or no, time for recovery of the detector, as new free charges are created as fast as, or faster than, they can recombine.

High-energy particles and photons can also cause irreversible changes to the silicon dioxide. Such changes can include reconfiguration of the bonding of atoms or migration of small atoms within the silicon dioxide. At normal operating temperatures of the detector, which are typically in a range from around room temperature to about 50° C., these changes will not recover. In particular, it is known that conventional silicon photodiodes used as EUV detectors degrade in efficiency with use.

The silicon dioxide layer on the surface of semiconductor detectors significantly reduces the efficiency of those detectors for low-energy (less than about 2 kV) electrons. Some low-energy electrons are absorbed by the silicon dioxide, thereby causing the silicon dioxide to charge up and deflect subsequent arriving electrons. Because a native oxide will always form on an exposed silicon surface, silicon detectors necessarily must have some oxide on their surface. Growing or depositing an alternative dielectric material (instead of the oxide) on the surface of the semiconductor results in a much higher density of defect states at the semiconductor to silicon dioxide interface. These defects reduce the quantum efficiency of the detector, especially for photons or charged particles absorbed close to the surface of the semiconductor."

The proposed solution is to use BSI sensor with pure boron deposited on the backside to form a shallow pn-junction. The metallic boron layer effectively shields the junction from all surface defects that might exist in the oxide or AR coating on the back surface:

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It came to my attention that an open source project Daala is developing a royalty-free video codec claimed to have better efficiency than the recently adopted H.265:

"Daala is a new general-purpose video codec currently under development at Xiph.Org. Our performance target is roughly a generation beyond current 'next-generation' codecs like VP9 and HEVC, making Daala a next-next-generation effort. As with other Xiph codecs, the Daala format is and will always be royalty-free with a permissive FOSS license. On May 30th 2013, our in-development Daala prototype encoded and decoded its first streams. Two hours later, Mozilla's David "oneman" Richards streamed the first live Daala video over the Internet."

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ARM Blog published a guest post by Japan-based Synthesis Corporation optimizing its image processing IP for ARM Mali-T600 GPU. The two examples are super-resolution and HDR, both showing a significant speedup:


Synthesis also demos its real-time HDR video capabilities in this Youtube video:

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PR Newswire: Omnivision announces OmniGlass reference design that combines a wearable display and a camera module: an ultra-compact and low-power OVP2200 liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) solution, a 4MP AF camera module with 720p HD video, and the OVP921, a companion chip that provides image processing, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi support.

A prototype of OmniGlass is currently available for demonstrations, and a development kit is available for customer sampling upon request. The OVP2200 is currently sampling, with volume production expected to begin during Q2 2014.

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Biomics, a Russian Academy's of Science Journal on Biochemistry and Genetics, published an article on Ion Torrents pH-sensor-based genome sequencing history and progress:

"Rothberg Sequencing (Potential For Semiconductor Sequencing)" by Vladimir V. Zubov, Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics of RAS, Russia (see pdf link for download)

The article goes through the Ion Torrent genome sequencing machine generations, and talks about the recent developments of the company's pH-sensor. The pH-pixel size has shrunk down to 1.25um now and continues shrinking, while resolution went up to 13MP. The price of full human genome sequencing is expected to drop to $1000 in 2014, in part due to the higher resolution pH-sensor chips: 660MP Ion PII and 1.2GP Ion PIII.

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Nobukazu Teranishi won 2013 IEEE Electron Device Society J.J. Ebers Award "For development of the Pinned Photodiode concept widely used in Image Sensors". Congratulations, Nobu-san!

Thanks to EF for letting me know!

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IEDM 2013 program has been published and has just two papers on image sensors:

27.3 High Performance Amorphous Metal-Oxide Semiconductors Thin-Film Passive and Active Pixel Sensors
R. Zhang, L. Bie, T.-C.Fung*, J. Kanicki, University of Michigan, *Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc.

"In this paper, for the first time, we report on high performance a-IGZO TFTs based passive pixel sensor (PPS) and active pixel sensor (APS) circuits. Experimental results show that single-TFT PPS with a pitch length of 50µm achieved a signal charge gain approaching to unity (Gain=0.93) under a fast readout time of 20µs and a dynamic range of 40dB. APS based on three a-IGZO TFTs established a high dynamic range, which is more than 60dB. In addition, 2-TFTs half active pixel sensor (H-APS) testing circuits are also used to investigate the voltage gain properties for APS in this work."

27.4 Three-dimensional Structures for High Saturation Signals and Crosstalk Suppression in 1.20 µm Pixel Back-Illuminated CMOS Image Sensor
T. Shinohara, K. Watanabe, S. Arakawa, H. Kawashima, A. Kawashima, T. Abe, T. Yanagita, K. Ohta, Y. Inada, M. Onizuka, H. Nakayama, Y. Tateshita, T. Morikawa, K. Ohno, D. Sugimoto, S. Kadomura, T. Hirayama, Sony Semiconductor

"We present three-dimensional structures, vertical transfer gate and buried shielding metal that can be applied to our latest 1/2.3” 1.20um 20M pixels back-illuminated CMOS image sensor. New pixel design and process exhibited 60% higher saturation signals and 50% lower crosstalk without any degradation in white blemish and dark current."

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Reuters: MIPI Alliance announces the availability of new version of its M-PHY specification. The M-PHY 3.0 doubles the current bandwidth (to 6.0Gbps per lane) while retaining the same distance reach as its predecessor. It also maintains the MIPI Alliance mobile priorities of low power, minimal protocol impact (modularity), and fast transitions between power states.

PRWeb: Arasan is quick to announce the availability of the industry’s first MIPI M-PHY 3.0-compliant IP. "We have been licensing the Arasan M-PHY analog IP for customers’ mobile application processor and memory applications for more than 18 months," stated Andrew Haines, Arasan's VP of Marketing. However, it remains to be seen if and when M-PHY is adapted in camera modules:

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Chipworks reverse engineered Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and found that its 13MP primary camera uses the latest generation of Sony stacked image sensor, the IMX135. Sony moved all the electronics to the bottom logic chip, so that the sensor's area is barely larger than the pixel array:

IMX135 Die

IMX135 TSVs

It's quite similar to iPhone 5s 8MP Sony ISX014 sensor, too having very little area overhead:

iPhone 5s primary sensor die

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Haaretz: Samsung invests an undisclosed amount in Mantis Vision, an Israeli startup developing structured light 3D cameras. The older product of the company is shown in this Youtube video:



Update: PrivateEquity.com reports that Samsung's new investment fund is expected to invest in activities that touch on those of Samsung R&D center in Israel, which deals with the development of mobile hardware technology and hardware components for cameras.

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Petapixel, Phys.org: University of Exeter, UK students present a project called "Paint By COLI". The team attempt to modify E.coli bacteria with light sensitive and pigment production genes, in order to produce a full color biocamera. Bio-Photography is the application of genetically engineered bacteria to act as the light sensor of a camera, replacing digital sensors or photographic film. The surface area of bacteria is on the order of microns, so the resolution should be quite competitive with the current cameras. Individual bacteria functions would be geared for certain wavelengths — red light would stimulate production of cyan pigment, green light for magenta pigment and blue light for yellow.

The project is currently supported by The University of Exeter Annual Fund, CLES, CEMPS and academics from across the University. The group is going to present the project at the Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) event in Lyon, France on Oct. 11-13.

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Microsoft Research posted its paper from CHI'12 conference "Shake’n’Sense: Reducing Interference for Overlapping Structured Light Depth Cameras" by Alex Butler, Shahram Izadi, Otmar Hilliges, David Molyneaux, Steve Hodges, and David Kim.


"The key behind Shake‟n‟Sense is to minimally vibrate a Kinect camera unit using an offset-weight vibration motor and thereby artificially introduce motion blur. Both the structured light DOE illuminator and the IR camera of the Kinect will move in harmony, which means that depth sensing works as normal, albeit with a little induced blur. However, even minor almost imperceptible motion of the sensor in this way causes blurring of structured light patterns from other units which serves to eliminate most of the crosstalk."

Update: It looks like University of North Carolina researchers proposed the same technique at about the same time.

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Business Wire: Tessera's DigitalOptics Corporation (DOC) announces today that Guangdong Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp. has placed the first mems|cam volume production purchase order. "We are proud to announce that OPPO and DOC are exclusive launch partners. OPPO will be the first smartphone OEM to incorporate mems|cam products in volume," stated John Thode, president of DigitalOptics Corporation. "OPPO has an excellent premium brand in China as demonstrated by the September 23 launch of the innovative N1 Smartphone platform. Integrating mems|cam modules into OPPO’s best-in-class smartphones will bring an exciting computational imaging user experience that further delivers on OPPO’s brand promise."

There has been speculation on who would be the first to bring the significant benefits of mems|cam to the mobile imaging market. Last week, several technology news blogs reported that mems|cam was first being brought to market in another smartphone platform (Google Nexus 5). Those reports were inaccurate.

Forbes quotes China Morning Post publishing that Oppo's total production is expected to be about 15M phones this year.

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