Archives for December 2015

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WSJ, Forbes, The Verge: Augmented-reality startup Magic Leap could raise up to $827 million in a new funding round. This would bring Magic Leap’s total funding to about $1.4 billion. If Magic Leap raises the full amount, it could be valued at about $3.7 billion, according to venture-capital data firm VC Experts. The previous investments came from Google, Qualcomm Ventures, KKR, Vulcan Capital, KPCB, Andreesen Horowtiz, Obvious Ventures and others.

“We’re fundamentally a new kind of lightfield chip to enable new experiences,” said Magic Leap founder and CEO Rony Abovitz at a conference in June. “There’s no off-the-shelf stuff used. That’s the reason for the amount of capital we’ve raised — to go to the moon.” Abovitz also released Magic Leap’s SDK and said the company was building 260,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility in Florida to develop components for the device.

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Pixpolar was awarded European Commission’s Seal of Excellence. Certificate delivered by the European Commission,as the institution managing Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Program for Research and Innovation 2014-2020. Following evaluation by an international panel of independent experts Pixpolar Oy was successful as an innovative project proposal.

A year ago, Pixpolar Oy received the funding from the first round of Horizon 2020 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) Instrument funding from EU for Phase 1 projects. In this round, the instrument received in total 2602 eligible project proposals, out of which 6% received funding. The toughest competition was within the Open Disruptive Innovation (Information and Communication Technologies) topic, where 3% of 886 eligible proposals received the funding. Pixpolar Oy was the only successful applicant from Finland under the Open Disruptive Innovation topic.

Also a year ago, Pixpolar Oy has received a support from TEKES (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation) for a demonstrator project.

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Vrije Universiteit Brussel awards its first Certificate of Appreciation to Optrima/SoftKinetic, a 3D Sensor company and a very successful VUB spin-off. The award is a token of recognition of the contribution, quality work, and dedication in promoting and valorising VUB's technological excellence around the globe. In October 2015, Sony announced the acquisition of SoftKinetic Systems.

SoftKinetic originated from a merger of VUB spin-off Optrima and SoftKinetic in 2011. Prof. Maarten Kuijk (ETRO), who founded Optrima with four of his PhD students, stood at the origin of SoftKinetic's groundbreaking 3D technology.

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ON Semi publishes a 15 min-long video on CMOS image sensor applications in automotive imaging. Unfortunately, only Japanese version is available:

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Extreme Lighting Group of Heriot-Watt University explains how one can see around corners with a help of very fast cameras:

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2016 Image Sensors Conference to be held on March 16-17 in London, UK, announces its agenda:

Photon Counting Without Avalanche Multiplication - Progress on the Quanta Image Sensor
Eric Fossum, Professor of Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth

Opportunities and Differentiation on Image Sensor Market
Vladimir Koifman, Chief Technology Officer of Analog Value

Present and Future Trends in Silicon Imagers for Non-Visible Imaging and Instrumentation
Bart Dierickx, Founder and CEO of Caeleste

Challenges for Scene Understanding in Automotive Environment
Anna Gaszczak, Research Lead Engineer of Jaguar Land Rover

The On-Chip-Optics for Future Optical Sensor
JC Hsieh, Associate Vice President of R&D of VisEra

Security Imaging
Anders Johannesson, Senior Expert - Imaging Research and Development, Axis Communications

Bayer Pattern and Image Quality
Jörg Kunze, Team Leader PreDevelopment of Basler

QuantumFilm: A New Way To Capture Light
Emanuele Mandelli, Vice President of Engineering of InVisage

CIS for High-End Niche Applications
Guy Meynants, CTO of CMOSIS

High Speed Image Sensors
Wilfried Uhring, Professor of ICube Laboratory - University of Strasbourg

Overview of the State of the Art Event Driven Sensors
Tobi Delbruck, Professor of Institute of Neuroinformatics

Minimal form factor camera modules for medical endoscopic and speciality imaging applications
Martin Waeny, CEO of AWAIBA

Challenges for Future Medical Endoscopic Imaging
Nana Akahane, Senior Supervisor - Medical Imaging Technology Department of Olympus Corporation

The Development of High Resolution Scintillators for X-ray Flat Panel Sensors
Simon Whitbread, Technology Specialist of Hamamatsu Photonics

Organic and Hybrid Photodetectors for Medical X-Ray Imaging
Sandro Tedde, Senior Key Expert Research Scientist of Siemens Healthcare

Broadcaster's Future Requirements for Ultra-High Definition TV
Richard Salmon, Lead Research Engineer of BBC Research & Development

Broadcasting and Pixilation
Peter Centen, Director R&D Cameras of Grass Valley

TBC
Simon Ji - LG Electronics

Bio-inspired Method Addresses Speed, DR and Power Efficiency Limitations of Image Sensors
Christoph Posch, Chief Technical Officer of Chronocam

New Business Models and Offers in Imaging Doesn't Prevent High Level of Innovation
Philippe Rommeveaux, President and CEO, Pyxalis

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PMD publishes a demo of its miniature ToF camera clipped on a back of smartphone:

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Nikkei reports that Panasonic is resuming image sensor development after freezing it for the last few years, aiming for applications including 8K UHDTV applications. The company plans to spend about 10b yen ($80.8M) to develop next-generation 8K sensors, with plans to release them in fiscal 2018.

Initially, Panasonic will use the new image sensors in its own consumer and broadcasting cameras. Later on, it intends to target broader applications including self-driving cars and surveillance, and may sell the sensors to other companies for smartphone and other applications. Production will likely be outsourced.

Panasonic had frozen image sensor development since its disastrous fiscal 2011. As earnings sharply picked up, Panasonic apparently decided that developing its own key image-processing components is essential to gaining a competitive in edge in imaging products.

TSR estimates the global image sensor market coming to 1.2 trillion yen in 2015. Sensors that support UHD imaging are seen as a growth area.

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ams announces the completion of the transaction to acquire CMOSIS.

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Based on MOU on October 28, 2015, Sony and Toshiba have signed definitive agreements to transfer to Sony and to Sony Semiconductor Corporation ("SCK"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony, Toshiba fab facilities, equipment and related assets in its Oita Operations facility, as well as other related equipment and assets owned by Toshiba.

Toshiba will transfer facilities, equipment and related assets of Toshiba's 300mm wafer production line, mainly located at its Oita Operations facility. The purchase price of the Transfer is 19 billion yen. Sony and Toshiba aim to complete the Transfer within the fiscal year ending March 31, 2016. Following the Transfer, Sony and SCK plan to operate the semiconductor fabrication facilities as fabrication facilities of SCK, primarily for manufacturing CMOS image sensors.

Sony is to offer the employees of Toshiba and its affiliates employed at the fabrication facilities, as well as certain employees involved in areas such as CMOS sensor engineering and design (approximately 1,100 employees in total), employment within the Sony Group.


At the time of construction of Oita fab in 2004, Toshiba said that it is to "be the first semiconductor facility in the world to deploy 65-nanometer process and design technologies. ...A 200 billion yen investment program from FY2003 to FY2007, will bring production capacity to 12,500 wafers a month. This could be further expanded if necessary, up to a capacity of 17,500 wafers a month, with further investment."

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PRNewswire: OmniVision reports the results for its fiscal quarter that ended on October 31, 2015. Revenues were $343.1M, as compared to $329.9M in the previous quarter, and $394.0M ia year ago. GAAP net income was $13.9M, as compared to $18.2M in the previous quarter, and $28.0M a year ago.

GAAP gross margin was 21.9%, as compared to 22.6% for the previous quarter and 22.0% a year ago. The decrease in gross margin was attributable to broad-based price erosions, particularly in the mobile phone market.

The Company ended the period with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaling $613.5M, an increase of $19.7M from the previous quarter.

"We are very pleased with our second quarter results. We have exceeded our own expectations, despite demand uncertainties in our various target markets," said Shaw Hong, CEO of OmniVision. "Regardless of these short-term uncertainties, we will continue to invest in the future of our business, and ultimately, return to our long-term growth trajectory."

Based on current trends, the Company expects revenues for the next quarter in the range of $310M to $340M.

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Toshiba publishes a couple of Youtube videos on its TMPV75 and TMPV76 Series Image Recognition Processors Applications in ADAS and other applications:

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2016 Electronic Imaging Symposium is organized by IS&T without SPIE. The Symposium is to be held in San Francisco, CA, on February 14-18, 2016. Its preliminary agenda has been published and has a broad collection of image sensor presentations. Below is a list of them in Image Sensors and Imaging Systems path:

A high dynamic range linear vision sensor with event asynchronous and frame-based synchronous operation
Juan A. Leñero-Bardallo, Ricardo Carmona-Galán, and Angel Rodríguez-Vázquez, Universidad de Sevilla (Spain)

A dual-core highly programmable 120dB image sensor
Benoit Dupont, Pyxalis (France)

High dynamic range challenges
Short presentation by Arnaud Darmont

Image sensor with organic photoconductive films by stacking the red/green and blue components
Tomomi Takagi, Toshikatu Sakai, Kazunori Miyakawa, and Mamoru Furuta; NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories and Kochi University of Technology (Japan)

High-sensitivity CMOS image sensor overlaid with Ga2O3/CIGS heterojunction photodiode
Kazunori Miyakawa, Shigeyuki Imura, Misao Kubota, Kenji Kikuchi, Tokio Nakada, Toru Okino, Yutaka Hirose, Yoshihisa Kato, and Nobukazu Teranishi; NHK Science and Technology Research Laboratories, NHK Sapporo Station, Tokyo University of Science, Panasonic Corporation, University of Hyogo, and 6Shizuoka University (Japan)

Sub-micron pixel CMOS image sensor with new color filter patterns
Biay-Cheng Hseih, Sergio Goma, Hasib Siddiqui, Kalin Atanassov, Jiafu Luo, RJ Lin, Hy Cheng, Kuoyu Chou, JJ Sze, and Calvin Chao; Qualcomm Technologies Inc. (United States) and TSMC (Taiwan)

A CMOS image sensor with variable frame rate for low-power operation
Byoung-Soo Choi, Sung-Hyun Jo, Myunghan Bae, Sang-Hwan Kim, and Jang-Kyoo Shin, Kyungpook National University (South Korea)

ADC techniques for optimized conversion time in CMOS image sensors
Cedric Pastorelli and Pascal Mellot; ANRT and STMicroelectronics (France)

Miniature lensless computational infrared imager
Evan Erickson, Mark Kellam, Patrick Gill, James Tringali, and David Stork, Rambus (United States)

Focal-plane scale space generation with a 6T pixel architecture
Fernanda Oliveira, José Gabriel Gomes, Ricardo Carmona-Galán, Jorge Fernández-Berni, and Angel Rodríguez-Vázquez; Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla (Spain)

Development of an 8K full-resolution single-chip image acquisition system
Tomohiro Nakamura, Ryohei Funatsu, Takahiro Yamasaki, Kazuya Kitamura, and Hiroshi Shimamoto, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) (Japan)

Characterization of VNIR hyperspectral sensors with monolithically integrated optical filters
Prashant Agrawal, Klaas Tack, Bert Geelen, Bart Masschelein, Pablo Mateo Aranda Moran, Andy Lambrechts, and Murali Jayapala; Imec and TMC (Belgium)

A 1.12-um pixel CMOS image sensor survey
Clemenz Portmann, Lele Wang, Guofeng Liu, Ousmane Diop, and Boyd Fowler, Google Inc (United States)

A comparative noise analysis and measurement for n-type and p-type pixels with CMS technique
Xiaoliang Ge, Bastien Mamdy, and Albert Theuwissen; Technische Univ. Delft (Netherlands), STMicroelectronics, Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (France), and Harvest Imaging (Belgium)

Increases in hot pixel development rates for small digital pixel sizes
Glenn Chapman, Rahul Thomas, Rohan Thomas, Klinsmann Meneses, Tony Yang, Israel Koren, and Zahava Koren; Simon Fraser Univ. (Canada) and Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst (United States)

EMVA1288 3.1rc2 and research on version 3.2 and next
Arnaud Darmont and Adrien Lombet, APHESA SPRL (Belgium)

A time-of-flight CMOS range image sensor using 4-tap output pixels with lateral-electric-field control
Taichi Kasugai, Sang-Man Han, Hanh Trang, Taishi Takasawa, Satoshi Aoyama, Keita Yasutomi, Keiichiro Kagawa, and Shoji Kawahito; Shizuoka Univ. and Brookman Technology (Japan)

Design, implementation and evaluation of a TOF range image sensor using multi-tap lock-in pixels with cascaded charge draining and modulating gates
Trang Nguyen, Taichi Kasugai, Keigo Isobe, Sang-Man Han, Taishi Takasawa, De XIng Lioe, Keita Yasutomi, Keiichiro Kagawa, and Shoji Kawahito; Shizuoka Univ. and Brookman Technology (Japan)

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2016 Electronic Imaging Symposium is organized by IS&T without SPIE. The Symposium is to be held in San Francisco, CA, on February 14-18, 2016. Its preliminary agenda has been published and has a broad collection of image sensor presentations. Below is a list of them in Image Sensors and Imaging Systems path:

A high dynamic range linear vision sensor with event asynchronous and frame-based synchronous operation
Juan A. Leñero-Bardallo, Ricardo Carmona-Galán, and Angel Rodríguez-Vázquez, Universidad de Sevilla (Spain)

A dual-core highly programmable 120dB image sensor
Benoit Dupont, Pyxalis (France)

High dynamic range challenges
Short presentation by Arnaud Darmont

Image sensor with organic photoconductive films by stacking the red/green and blue components
Tomomi Takagi, Toshikatu Sakai, Kazunori Miyakawa, and Mamoru Furuta; NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories and Kochi University of Technology (Japan)

High-sensitivity CMOS image sensor overlaid with Ga2O3/CIGS heterojunction photodiode
Kazunori Miyakawa, Shigeyuki Imura, Misao Kubota, Kenji Kikuchi, Tokio Nakada, Toru Okino, Yutaka Hirose, Yoshihisa Kato, and Nobukazu Teranishi; NHK Science and Technology Research Laboratories, NHK Sapporo Station, Tokyo University of Science, Panasonic Corporation, University of Hyogo, and 6Shizuoka University (Japan)

Sub-micron pixel CMOS image sensor with new color filter patterns
Biay-Cheng Hseih, Sergio Goma, Hasib Siddiqui, Kalin Atanassov, Jiafu Luo, RJ Lin, Hy Cheng, Kuoyu Chou, JJ Sze, and Calvin Chao; Qualcomm Technologies Inc. (United States) and TSMC (Taiwan)

A CMOS image sensor with variable frame rate for low-power operation
Byoung-Soo Choi, Sung-Hyun Jo, Myunghan Bae, Sang-Hwan Kim, and Jang-Kyoo Shin, Kyungpook National University (South Korea)

ADC techniques for optimized conversion time in CMOS image sensors
Cedric Pastorelli and Pascal Mellot; ANRT and STMicroelectronics (France)

Miniature lensless computational infrared imager
Evan Erickson, Mark Kellam, Patrick Gill, James Tringali, and David Stork, Rambus (United States)

Focal-plane scale space generation with a 6T pixel architecture
Fernanda Oliveira, José Gabriel Gomes, Ricardo Carmona-Galán, Jorge Fernández-Berni, and Angel Rodríguez-Vázquez; Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla (Spain)

Development of an 8K full-resolution single-chip image acquisition system
Tomohiro Nakamura, Ryohei Funatsu, Takahiro Yamasaki, Kazuya Kitamura, and Hiroshi Shimamoto, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) (Japan)

Characterization of VNIR hyperspectral sensors with monolithically integrated optical filters
Prashant Agrawal, Klaas Tack, Bert Geelen, Bart Masschelein, Pablo Mateo Aranda Moran, Andy Lambrechts, and Murali Jayapala; Imec and TMC (Belgium)

A 1.12-um pixel CMOS image sensor survey
Clemenz Portmann, Lele Wang, Guofeng Liu, Ousmane Diop, and Boyd Fowler, Google Inc (United States)

A comparative noise analysis and measurement for n-type and p-type pixels with CMS technique
Xiaoliang Ge, Bastien Mamdy, and Albert Theuwissen; Technische Univ. Delft (Netherlands), STMicroelectronics, Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (France), and Harvest Imaging (Belgium)

Increases in hot pixel development rates for small digital pixel sizes
Glenn Chapman, Rahul Thomas, Rohan Thomas, Klinsmann Meneses, Tony Yang, Israel Koren, and Zahava Koren; Simon Fraser Univ. (Canada) and Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst (United States)

EMVA1288 3.1rc2 and research on version 3.2 and next
Arnaud Darmont and Adrien Lombet, APHESA SPRL (Belgium)

A time-of-flight CMOS range image sensor using 4-tap output pixels with lateral-electric-field control
Taichi Kasugai, Sang-Man Han, Hanh Trang, Taishi Takasawa, Satoshi Aoyama, Keita Yasutomi, Keiichiro Kagawa, and Shoji Kawahito; Shizuoka Univ. and Brookman Technology (Japan)

Design, implementation and evaluation of a TOF range image sensor using multi-tap lock-in pixels with cascaded charge draining and modulating gates
Trang Nguyen, Taichi Kasugai, Keigo Isobe, Sang-Man Han, Taishi Takasawa, De XIng Lioe, Keita Yasutomi, Keiichiro Kagawa, and Shoji Kawahito; Shizuoka Univ. and Brookman Technology (Japan)

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Omnivision publishes a Youtube video on PureCel Plus and PureCel Plus-S Technology:

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