Archives for August 2016

ON Semi Image Sensor Business Results

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ON Semi Q2 2016 earnings report updates on image sensor business:

"Now let me provide you an update on performance of our business units, starting with Image Sensor Group, or ISG. Revenue for ISG was approximately $173 million, up approximately three percent as compared to the first quarter.

We have clearly established ourselves as a technology and market leader in ADAS. We continue to reinforce our leadership position and we are now enabling future autonomous driving vehicles through our expertise in automotive CMOS image sensors. We are working with all major auto OEMs and tier-1 integrators to define next generation platforms. In Korea, we are benefitting from adoption of surround view cameras in vehicles, with strong wins for our CMOS Image Sensor in multiple upcoming models. We are seeing acceleration in revenue for our recently launched 1MP and 2MP CMOS image sensors for in-cabin driver monitoring applications.

In the machine vision market, our Python series of CMOS image sensor continues to grow at a rapid pace. Our CCD image sensors for industrial applications also grew at an impressive pace in the second quarter driven by demand for machine vision applications, such as flat panel inspection. We expect continued growth in our machine vision revenue driven by increased automation in manufacturing, and investments by industrial companies in upgrading their manufacturing capabilities.
"

However, it appears that other product groups were more successful than ISG, so the share of image sensor business has shrunk to 20%:

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Himax on AR/VR Market Opportunity

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Himax Q2 2016 earnings call and an official press release have few unusually long statements on AR/VR business potential, unusual for such kind of documents, that is:

"The recent staggering success of Pokémon Go has provided a looking glass into the future trajectory of the AR technology and given one early answer for why and how you’d want it to. Since its launch just over a month ago, the AR game has taken the digital world by storm with already more than 100 million app downloads and 20 million active users. Thanks to the viral popularity of Pokémon Go, AR is now getting the attention and consumer validation that we, at Himax, have always known to be possible. While we must give credit where it is due, the AR technology used by Pokémon Go today is still quite primitive.

Compared to the AR/MR technologies being developed by our customers and partners, Pokémon Go pales in comparison in terms of how AR can bring alive the consumer experience to interact directly with the physical environment with more sophisticated holographic imagery, 3D sensing and real-time surroundings detection. If you have not seen demonstration of AR devices already, its holographic imagery will actually appear on your desk, your chair or walking next to you on the street. Moreover, the world of AR is much more than just gaming. It represents a next generation computing platform. Future versions of the technology will cover both commercial and consumer uses and will be much more sophisticated and produce an endless stream of uses. These could include daily computing in a virtual office, social networking, teleconferencing, etc.

Due to the eye-opening effect of Pokémon Go, those who thought AR required several more years to gain traction are changing their models as the game, almost overnight, elevated AR to mass-market and added 10's of billions of dollars to its market potential in the next few years. A new and lucrative marketing tool on top of AR software and applications are being created that will catapult AR device development and intensify further investment in the sector. We believe the path Pokémon Go started will prompt an AR industry that most didn’t think possible before.
"

"Last but not least, we continue to make good progress in two new smart sensor areas which we announced earlier by collaborating with certain heavyweight partners, including leading consumer electronics brands and a leading international smartphone chipset maker. By pairing a DOE integrated WLO laser diode collimator with a near infrared (NIR) CIS, we are offering the most effective total solution for 3D sensing and detection in the smallest form factor which can be easily integrated into next generation smartphones, AR/VR devices and consumer electronics. Similarly, the ultra-low-power QVGA CMOS image sensor can also be bundled with our WLO module to support super low power computer vision to enable new applications across mobile devices, consumer electronics, surveillance, drones, IoT and artificial intelligence. We will report the business developments in these new territories in due course. Regarding other CIS products, we maintain a leading position in laptop application and will increase shipments for multimedia applications."

On the earnings side, a decline has been reported in the company's image sensor sales.

Talking about AR/VR investments, in a somewhat unrelated news, a VR sports broadcasting startup NextVR closed an Asian-centric Series B round of around $80M, valuing the company at $800M. The round included CITIC Group, Softbank Corp and China Assets Holdings, Time Warner Ventures and The Madison Square Garden Company. (source: MIDIA Research, Techcrunch)

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Pixart Reports Rise in Non-Mouse Products

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Pixart reports its Q2 2016 results with a rise in sales of non-mouse products. The revenue increased by 2.3% QoQ to NT$1,051.7 million. The gross margin decreased from 50.9% in previous quarter to 49.9% in Q2 2016.

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Almalence on Future of Mobile Imaging

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Tech.co publishes an interview with Eugene Panich, CEO of Almalence, on mobile imaging trends. Few quotes:

"The software onboard smartphones today is revolutionary. The ability to take pictures in low light, digitally zoom (or crop) without significant resolution loss, and capture moving objects without blur is in large part a function of software, not hardware. In fact many smartphone cameras are designed from the ground up based on software requirements."

But Panich believes that the value added by software is likely to slow in the future. The great achievements of the last five years cannot be matched going forward, at least not without a total reconfiguration of the smartphone camera, which includes the hardware.

“There are a lot of ideas being tested right now, but the industry has not picked a direction yet. But the industry understands that the next step is a total overhaul of the smartphone camera.”

Some of the ideas being tested are wide angle cameras, attachable camera pieces, pop up cameras, and array cameras. Each has its merits and demerits, and none has set itself apart from the pack so far.

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SMIC on LFoundry Plans

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SMIC quarterly earnings call does not give many details on LFoundry acquisition and plans. Just few small statements from the call:

"Since the acquisition of LFoundry, we have officially entered into the auto IC market. LFoundry manufacturers above 25% of world's auto CIS.

So they would contribute two months of revenue to us in Q3, which is roughly about $20 million to $30 million. In terms of the profit contributions, because right now actually they are running at not high utilization right now, so we expect the contribution to our profit is quite minimal.

There will be a limited amount of our CapEx in LFoundry to bring technology that is aligned to SMIC. So there are a few missing tools in LFoundry that we need to procure to ensure the technology alignment. But the total CapEx for the next year will be fairly limited. We'll be trying to leverage the present unused capacity in the most efficient way.

Let me just also comment a little bit more on LFoundry. Right now we actually have identified some technology and products that we're going to transfer to LFoundry, that hopefully would help to bring up the utilization in the next three to four quarters. At the same time, we are also leveraging the strength of LFoundry in the auto and CIS area, to re-cross-sell the technologies to our own customer set in China. So we believe actually this acquisition will be -- would create good value for us.
"

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AutoSens Interview on ISO 26262 Standard

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AutoSens conference to be held in Brussels, Belgium on Sept. 20-22, 2016 is about to sold-out with roughly twice as many people registered as the original target.

The conference site publishes an interview on the new ISO 26262 standard with ON Semi's Michael Brading, Technology Strategist, and Kenneth Boorom, Functional Safety Manager at the company’s facility in Corvallis, Oregon. Few quotes:

More and more image sensors are going into vehicles, covering applications from backup-cameras to pedestrian detection and lane keeping. Combining that mix of signals into an integrated single system is a challenge.

One example of a failure mode that we have identified is concerned with the readout mechanism. CMOS sensors are essentially designed around a CMOS memory architecture. The data flows off the chip one row at a time and that means that these can be susceptible to duplication – at first glance, the visual output might seem OK, but the net effect is that an error on multiple rows might obscure an object in the field of view."

View from in-car camera, without any visible defects
in signal.
In this illustration, a row address aliasing fault can lead
to a failure in which the full scene is replaced by
a subset of the scene replicated several times.

"The safety design process, common in industry and also established within ISO 26262, helps us find the problems that otherwise might not be detectable: A defect invisible to the human eye could upset the behavior of an algorithm. And critically, a defect in the behavior of an algorithm could impact the resulting data.

This image down not exhibit unexpected noise artefacts.
The same street scene showing faint bands of noise
caused by ‘bit-flip’ a symptom of a signal timing error.

"Image sensor safety mechanisms that ON Semiconductor provides in support of the ISO 26262 design process can detect some random hardware failures which can result in image quality degradation, such as that shown here, where a ‘bit flip’ in the design signal timing, produces noise in the second image."

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Computer Vision Cores for Licensing

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PRNewswire: CEVA announces that Rockchip, one of China’s low-cost SoC companies, has licensed the CEVA-XM4 imaging and vision DSP to enhance the imaging and computer vision capabilities of its’ SoC products for smartphones, ADAS, drones, robotics and other smart camera devices.

Rockchip will leverage the CEVA-XM4 for low-light enhancement, digital video stabilization, object detection and tracking, and 3D depth sensing. In addition, the CEVA-XM4 will enable Rockchip to use the deep learning technologies utilizing CEVA’s Deep Neural Network (CDNN2) software framework.

"Rockchip is determined to deliver ever-more compelling solutions for mobile and consumer devices, using the best-of-breed technologies available,” said Feng Chen, CMO of Rockchip. “The CEVA-XM4 imaging and vision processor and comprehensive software offering allows us to truly embrace the potential of computational photography, computer vision and machine learning in our product designs, seamlessly handling even the most complex use cases and algorithms.

CEVA and Rockchip have a long and successful partnership incorporating multiple generations of our imaging and vision DSPs shipping in tens of millions of Rockchip-based devices to date,” said Gideon Wertheizer, CEO of CEVA. “This latest agreement will enable Rockchip to significantly strengthen its offering in the exciting realm of computer vision and provide the platform with which they can improve the performance, power consumption and feature sets of their next-generation SoCs.

Synopsys publishes a video on its vision cores platform, too available for licensing:

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Imaging Conference at SEMICON Europa

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SEMICON Europa is to be held in Grenoble, France on October 25-26, 2016. The Imaging Conference at the event has quite an impressive image sensor agenda:

  • Drivers for Vision based Applications in the Automotive Environment
    Heinrich Gotzig, Valeo Master Expert, Valeo Schalter und Sensoren GmbH
  • The direction of CMOS image sensor evolution.
    Teruo Hirayama, Corporate Executive/ Pesident of Device & Material R&D Group, Sony Corporation
  • Camera module technologies and trends comprising assembly technologies, testing, and automation
    Kathrin Rieken, Design Engineer, Jabil Optics Germany GmbH
  • Driving by numbers
    Richard Bramley, Safety Architect, NVIDIA
  • Why image quality KPIs are a must for digital camera tuning
    Nicolas Touchard, VP Marketing, DxO Labs
  • Next Generation Human Activity Sensing For Smart Buildings
    Guillaume CROZET, VP Sales & Marketing, IRLYNX
  • Introducing vivaMOS - a CMOS image sensor spin-out from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL)
    Dan Cathie, CEO, vivaMOS Ltd
  • Enhanced features of camera modules using ultrasonic ceramic motors
    Jean-Michel Meyer, CEO, miniswys SA
  • Design strategies for low cost infrared cameras
    Guillaume DRUART, Research Scientist, ONERA
  • Is there anything beyond? Terahertz imaging: potential and perspectives
    Matteo Perenzoni, Senior Researcher, FBK
  • Democratization of optical spectroscopy for material analysis
    Damian Goldring, CTO, Consumer Physics Inc.
  • A compact, 4 channels fluorescence imaging acquisition system with no moving parts for molecular biology applications.
    Marco Bianchessi, R&I Manager, STMicroelectronics
  • Innovation in imaging on sensors, spectral filters, software and vision systems
    Maarten Willems, business director, imec
  • Analogue and Digital Pixels for Time Resolved SPAD Sensors
    Robert Henderson, Professor, University of Edinburgh
  • Neural Networks for Industry 4.0 : Analytics at the edge of the network
    Philippe LAMBINET, CEO, Cogito Instruments SA
  • Event-Driven Sensing and Processing for Vision
    Bernabe Linares-Barranco, Reseacher, CSIC
  • PRE-PROCESSING OF IMAGER DATA FOR 3D TOF IMAGING
    Beat De Coi, CEO, ESPROS Photonics AG
  • A scientific HDR Multi-spectral imaging platform
    Benoit Dupont, Business Development, Pyxalis
  • Optimization of CMOS image sensor utilizing Variable Temporal Multi-Sampling Partial Transfer Technique to Achieve Full-frame High Dynamic Range with Superior Low Light and Stop Motion Capability
    Salman Kabir, Systems Engineer, Imaging Division, Rambus
  • Zero delay Focus with poLight TLens
    Jacques Dumarest, System Principal Engineer, poLight
  • CMOS Image Sensor Scaling Enabled by Direct Bond Technology
    Paul Enquist, VP 3D R&D, Invensas
  • Advanced Wafer Level Chip Scale Packaging Solution for Industrial CMOS Image Sensors.
    Jérôme VANRUMBEKE, Profesionnal Imaging Sensors Project Manager, e2v Grenoble
  • High Dynamic Range (HDR) stereo camera system for applications in robotics
    Markus Strobel, Head of Department Vision Sensors, Institut für Mikroelektronik Stuttgart
  • Deep submicron CMOS for novel types of smart image sensors
    Peter Seitz, Adjunct professor of optoelectronics, EPFL - Institute of Microengineering

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Image Sensor Training at CEI-Europe

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CEI-Europe publishes a Youtube video on image sensor courses by Albert Theuwissen:

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Omnivision Announces 1/18-inch Wafer Level Module for Endoscopic Applications

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PRNewswire: OmniVision announces the OVM6946, its first wafer-level camera module for medical applications. With a compact size of 1.05 mm x 1.05 mm, a z-height height of 2.27 mm, 120-deg FOV and an extended focusing range of 3 mm to infinity, the 1/18-inch 400x400 1.75um pixel OVM6946 is suited for minimally-invasive endoscopes. Built on OmniVision's OmniBSI+T pixel architecture, the OVM6946 is said to be the industry's most cost-effective single-chip imaging solution for single-use endoscopes.

"Cross-contamination risks, downtime inefficiencies, and high costs associated with repairs, pre-procedure testing, and sterilization of reusable endoscopes are fueling market interests in disposable endoscopes," said Aaron Chiang, director of marketing at OmniVision. "As a cost-effective and compact camera module with excellent image quality, we view the OVM6946 as an ideal solution for next-generation single-use endoscopes."

The OVM6946 is currently available for sampling, and is expected to enter volume production in Q1 2017.

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DIN Standard for Gesture Control Interface

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Gestigon reports that German standard office DIN has approved a DIN SPEC 91333 standard for gesture control interfaces. From Google automatic translation:

"DIN SPEC provides instructions and recommendations for the design of the user interface of touchless gesture control in human-system interaction. Components of this document are central concepts, illustrating the process of contactless gesture control and the description, identification and representation (illustration) of human gestures. Furthermore, to define general rules for the design of usable gestures. Furthermore, examples presented touchless gesture. The DIN SPEC does not constitute a comprehensive catalog gesture nor a comprehensive list of applications, since these must be created industry- or application-specific. This DIN SPEC is intended for developers, product manufacturers, buyers, testers and end users of systems with gesture control. This DIN SPEC should together with E DIN EN ISO 9241-960 and ISO / IEC 30113-1 are applied and deals exclusively with the touchless gesture control specific aspects of the user interface in the human-system interaction."

The title page of the document shows a list of contributors to the standard:

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Every Photon Counts

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Sensors Journal publishes a paper "The Quanta Image Sensor: Every Photon Counts" by Eric Fossum, Jiaju Ma, Saleh Masoodian, Leo Anzagira and Rachel Zizza from Dartmouth College. "This paper reviews the QIS concept and its imaging characteristics. Recent progress towards realizing the QIS for commercial and scientific purposes is discussed. This includes implementation of a pump-gate jot device in a 65 nm CIS BSI process yielding read noise as low as 0.22 e− r.m.s. and conversion gain as high as 420 µV/e−, power efficient readout electronics, currently as low as 0.4 pJ/b in the same process, creating high dynamic range images from jot data, and understanding the imaging characteristics of single-bit and multi-bit QIS devices. The QIS represents a possible major paradigm shift in image capture."

Illustration of photoelectron counting. The signal is the continuously sampled FD voltage from a TPG jot (with 0.28 e− r.m.s. read noise when operated in a CDS mode.) The FD voltage was changed by photoelectrons from SW (and possibly dark generated electrons.) Each single electron generates a fixed voltage jump on FD, and with deep sub-electron read noise, the electron quantization effect is visible.
Scatter plot of voltage read noise vs. CG for PG jots and TPG jots. The read noise in e− r.m.s. levels are shown with dashed lines.

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Sony to Use New Funds to Expand Stacked Sensor Manufacturing and Image Sensor R&D

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The Wrap, Nikkei: Sony plans to raise $3.6b (440b Yen) through the issuance of new shares and bonds, all a part of its ongoing Mid-Term Corporate Strategy. "Sony plans to use the money from the issuance of new shares to increase its production capacity of stacked CMOS censors in its Devices segment, which it hopes will lead to additional profits. Further, the company wants to use the funds raised by the convertible bonds portion against capital expenditures for the segment and the repayment of debts.

Specifically, Sony aims to use about 188 billion Yen from the common stock offering to fund capital expenditures in the Devices segment, and the remainder to fund R&D there. From the convertible bonds issuance, Sony will use 51 billion Yen to fund capital expenditures on devices, 25 billion Yen to redeem outstanding bonds upon maturity, and the remainder to repay longterm debts.
"

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Socionext Demos 8K Video Encoder Solution

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Socionext publishes a NAB presentation of its 8K real time video encoding solution based on 4 boards with MB86M31 processor:

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Pockemon Go and Imaging Industry

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Yole Developpement publishes its take on how Pockemon Go can transform mobile imaging industry. Few quotes:

"In the quest for Pokemon, some have suggested that 3D cameras would make a better job at catching the small monsters. The share of Lenovo did take a good 10% upward due to this rumor. With the recent release of Phab 2 Pro, Lenovo integrated a PMD made 3D camera making it the first Google Tango enabled phablet.

We are entering into a new era of mixed reality interactions. Cameras and sensors that fit our smartphones will play a major role in this new era, actually they might even be one of the centerpiece.
"

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Oppo F1s Front Camera Has Higher Resolution Than Rear One

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Newly announced Oppo F1s "Selfie Expert" smartphone features 16MP selfie front camera, while the rear one is only 13MP. The front camera has a number of software extensions, such as selfie panorama mode.

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Socionext Demos 4-Camera Fusion

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Socionext publishes a Youtube video showing 4-camera image fusion to create different views in automotive applications:

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Samyang 135mm f2 review – an affordable bright telephoto!

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Samyang's 135mm f2 is a large aperture telephoto prime lens at an affordable price. Like most previous Samyang lenses, it's manual focus only and also lacks image stabilisation, but these allow it to hit a low price compared to rivals and with impressive image quality to boot. Thomas compared it against the Zeiss and Nikkor 135mm f2 teles, both older options costing considerably more. We think you'll be impressed by the results in his Samyang 135mm f2 review!

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Recent Image Sensor Theses

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There are two more interesting image sensor theses published recently:

"Low-Power and Compact CMOS Circuit Design of Digital Pixel Sensors for X-Ray Imagers" PhD Thesis by Roger Figueras Bague, Barcelona University, Spain. Here is the pixel proposal:


"A 1-Mega Pixels HDR and UV Sensitive Image Sensor With Interleaved 14-bit 64Ms/s SAR ADC" MSc Thesis by Ruijun Zhang. Delft University, The Netherlands, presents his work at Caeleste with fairly complete circuit-level overview of all blocks of the image sensor from pixel to digital output.

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Image Quality vs Speed in Mobile Phone Cameras

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A brave PhD candidate from University of Vaasa, Finland, presents his thesis for public discussion a week before the thesis defense scheduled on Aug. 11, 2016. The thesis "Benchmarking of Mobile Phone Cameras" by Veli-Tapani Peltoketo is available for download and "defines a new benchmarking method for mobile phone cameras. The benchmarking combines different image quality and camera performance metrics to a comparable, single value benchmarking score. According to the research, heavy image quality algorithms used nowadays may slow down functionality of mobile phone cameras. Moreover, the research highlights the main principles to compare mobile phone cameras."

"Nowadays an image captured by an imaging sensor is practically rebuilt again in a post processing pipeline of a digital camera system. The doctoral thesis reveals cameras which image quality features are superior but correspondingly the same camera can be one of the slowest of the comparison."

"Even though the image quality of a camera can be extremely good, slowness of the camera may prevent to capture the right moment and the result is as same as an image with poor quality: the image is not used", says Peltoketo.

"The research introduces also main principles which should be taken into account when benchmarking scores are implemented for mobile phone cameras.

Firstly, all measurement methods and equations have to be public. Used metrics, measurement methods, and especially equations may include intentional or other weights which can bias the result.

Secondly, different measurement environment should be used when mobile phone cameras are benchmarked. Especially low light environment is very challenging to mobile phone cameras. Image quality and speed results may vary significantly in low light environment.

Finally, a perceptual image quality should be taken in to account when benchmarking is done. A color saturation is a good example of differences between perceptual and objective metric. An image looks better, if the color saturation is artificially increased. However, objectively the image includes a color error.

One may ask which is the best mobile phone camera? Peltoketo notes that it is quite difficult to give an unambiguous answer. However, if the results of the thesis give some answers of cameras available year 2014.

“The best image quality was measured from Lumia 1020 and Zopo C2 cameras whereas the speed performance was best in iPhone 5s Samsung S3 cameras.


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Caeleste Announces Electroniad

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On October 14th 2016, Caeleste will organize ELECTRONIAD (A Quiz for electronic students, professionals and hobbyists) in Technopolis, Mechelen, Belgium.

TYPES OF QUESTIONS:
  • Electronic problem solving.
  • Knowledge, trivia, history.
  • Practical tests.
SUBJECTS:
  • ​Analog/mixed mode electronics
  • Digital electronics
  • Image sensors,
  • Opto-electronics, Photonics,
  • More-than-Moore
  • History of ~
  • Applications of ~
  • Manufacturing of ~
FORMAT:
  • 4 person team
  • Questions will be shown on beamer.
  • Simultaneous Dutch & English (two beamers).
  • 8 rounds of 10 questions.
  • The use of electronic devices is strictly forbidden.
PRIZES:
  • The inalienable honor and fame to have won the first ever ELECTRONIAD.
  • Silicon, Gold, Silver, Caeleste Blue.
  • Souvenirs for every team.
THE JURY:
  • Willy Sansen
  • Walter Schoenmaeckers

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Gentex Intelligent Mirrors

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Automotive mirror manufacturer Gentex presents a number of products based on its proprietary CMOS sensors at its 2016 Investor and Analyst Day:

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Sony to Reduce Investment in CMOS Sensor Manufacturing Expansion

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According to Digitimes Research, Sony reduces its equipment investment for CMOS sensors to JPY70 billion ($691.53M) in fiscal 2016, keeping its sensor production capacity at 70,000 12-inch equivalent wafers a month.

The CMOS sensors for automotive, security and medical applications are expected to reach over 27% CAGR over 2014-2020 compared to a 4% for the handset sector, the largest market for Sony's image sensors currently.

The global medical sensor market is expected to reach US$300M in 2020, an estimated CAGR of 31% during the 2014-2020. Sony aims to take up a 30% share of the global surgical endoscopy-use image sensor market by 2020.

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Single Photon Detection by Human Eye

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Contrary to the common belief, a single photon perception by a human eye might be possible, says Nature Communications paper "Direct detection of a single photon by humans" by Jonathan N. Tinsley, Maxim I. Molodtsov, Robert Prevedel, David Wartmann, Jofre Espigulé-Pons, Mattias Lauwers and Alipasha Vaziri from University of Vienna, Austria.

From the abstract: "we report that humans can detect a single-photon incident on the cornea with a probability significantly above chance. This was achieved by implementing a combination of a psychophysics procedure with a quantum light source that can generate single-photon states of light. We further discover that the probability of reporting a single photon is modulated by the presence of an earlier photon, suggesting a priming process that temporarily enhances the effective gain of the visual system on the timescale of seconds."

Model for photon-induced priming of single-photon detection probability.

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Vision Award Nomenees

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IMV-Europe announces a list of 2016 Vision Award candidates, with several image sensor cvompanies among them:

  • Aphesa, A novel 120dB image sensor platform and camera for scientific and industrial applications, Arnaud Darmont (Aphesa), Benoit Dupont (Pyxalis)
  • E2v, The Emerald family – a leap forward in industrial image sensors, Gareth Powell
  • E2v, A 3D time-of-flight solution with leading state-of-the-art 1.3MP depth resolution dedicated to industrial environments and markets, Ha Lan Do Thu
  • Fastree3D, Advanced 3D imagers for rapid movement capture, Claude Florin
  • Xenics, Laser gated imaging – Bobcat-320 Gated, Raf Vandersmissen

The Award will be presented during the Vision show in Stuttgart, Germany, held from 8 to 10 November, 2016.

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Juha Alakarhu Gets Back to Nokia

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DPReview reports that Microsoft Lumia camera group leader Juha Alakarhu leaves Microsoft to re-join Nokia as the head of the Ozo VR camera.

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Digi-Capital Reports $2b VR/AR Investments in Last 12 Months

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Digi-Capital reports a sharp rise in investment activity in AR and VR companies:


Digi-Capital sees VR/AR as the next generation growth platform for the whole industry:


The company forecasts a fast AR/VR sales growth and a market size reaching $120b in 2020:

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Samsung Glalaxy Note 7 Features Iris Scanner

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Samsung presents iris scanner security feature in its new Galaxy Note 7:

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One More e2v Video

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e2v publishes one more video on its ground based astronomy projects:

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Zeiss Apo Sonnar 135mm f2 review – a manual focus bright telephoto!

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The Zeiss Apo Sonnar 135mm f2.0 is a medium telephoto lens with a large aperture for full-frame bodies and is available in Canon or Nikon mounts. The price tag may not be up there with the company's Otus range, but it's still a lot of money for a lens that's manual focus only with no image stabilization. To find out if it's worth it, Thomas compared the Apo Sonnar 135mm f2 against the ageing Nikkor 135mm f2 and the much more affordable Samyang 135mm f2. Find out which manual-focus telephoto is best for you in his Zeiss Apo Sonnar 135mm f2 review!

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