Archives for September 2021

Sony to Start Sampling SPAD LiDAR Sensor for Automotive Applications in March 2022

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Sony announces the upcoming release of the IMX459 stacked SPAD depth sensor for automotive LiDAR applications, expected to become the industry first stacked SPAD in production.

This product packs 10 μm pixels and distance measuring processing circuit onto a single chip, making for a compact 1/2.9-type form factor. By leveraging Sony's technologies such as a BSI pixel structure, stacked configurations, and Cu-Cu connections created in the development of CMOS image sensors, Sony delivers 24% PDE at 905nm wavelength and improved responsiveness, enabling distance measuring at 15-centimeter range resolutions from long-range to short -range distances.

This product is set to be certified as meeting the requirements of the AEC-Q100 Grade 2 automotive electronic component reliability tests. Sony has also introduced a development process that complies with ISO 26262 automobile functional safety standards and supports functional safety requirement level ASIL- B(D) for functionalities such as failure detection, notification, and control. 


Sony publishes a video explaining its sensor features in a popular form:


Sony has also developed a mechanical scanning LiDAR reference design equipped with this new SPAD sensor, which is now being offered to customers and partners. Providing the design will help customers and partners save on man-hours in the LiDAR development process as well as reduce costs by optimizing device selection.

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Samsung Expects LiDAR Market to Overgrow CIS in 2026

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SEMI Europe Summit publishes a couple of slides from the presentations including Samsung prediction about LiDAR market:


Once we are at LiDARs, Yole Developpement publishes its estimations of design wins for LiDAR companies:

SEMI Europe also publishes few other interesting slides:

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MIPI D-PHY v.3.0 Standard Increases Speed to 11Gbps per Lane

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The MIPI Alliance announces a major update to its MIPI D-PHY specification for connecting megapixel cameras and high-resolution displays to application processors. Version 3.0 doubles the data rate of D-PHY’s standard channel to 9 Gbps for the standard channel (and 11 Gbps for its short channel), while extending the power efficiency of the specification.

In tandem with the boost in data rate, D-PHY v3.0 introduces a Continuous-Time Linear Equalizer (CTLE) on the receiver side of a connection to maintain the interface’s superior power efficiency. D-PHY v3.0 is fully compatible with previous versions of the MIPI specification.

Pixel rates in camera and display applications are constantly increasing, and v3.0 of D-PHY provides the leap in data rate necessary to support next-generation image sensors while extending the specification’s low-power attribute,” said Joel Huloux, chairman of MIPI Alliance. “MIPI continues to innovate its PHY interfaces to enable advancements in camera and display applications and emerging market dynamics.

In conjunction with the release of D-PHY v3.0, MIPI Alliance also announces version 2.1 of MIPI C-PHY, which provides high throughput and superior power efficiency to connect displays and cameras to application processors. The specification supports symbol rates up to 6 Gigasymbols per second (Gsps), equivalent to 13.7 Gbps, over the standard channel and up to 8 Gsps over the short channel. A new 64-bit PHY Protocol Interface (PPI) in v2.1 provides a wider bus between C-PHY and a chip’s core logic for better support of higher-performance applications. The new version of the interface is fully compatible with previous versions of C-PHY.

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Smartsens Launches its First 1um Pixel Product

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SmartSens launches the SC1600CS, a 16MP CMOS sensor with a 1.0 µm pixel, targeting at front-facing cellphone camera applications.

The SC1600CS offers 16MP resolution with the smallest pixel size in SmartSens’ products at 1.0 µm. It also features SFCPixel technology and low noise reading circuit design to deliver full-color night vision. Furthermore, the SC1600CS integrates QCell technology to provide QCell Bin mode. The QCell color filter array on the SC1600CS uses QCell binning to output 4MP images with 3x the sensitivity, improving the SNR and dynamic range by 13% and 8.5dB respectively.

The SC1600CS is currently available for sampling and expected to start mass production in Q4 of 2021.

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SkyWater Foundry Announces 90nm MPW Program

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SkyWater Technology, an ex-Cypress fab located  in Minneapolis area, MN, is accepting design submissions for its 90 nm readout integrated circuit (S90ROIC) MPW program, including support for ITAR designs. The program is targeted for specialized aerospace and defense applications, LIDAR and LADAR and other applications ranging from automotive sensing, microbolometers and medical x-ray to augmented reality, industrial machine vision and security, among others. Design submissions for SkyWater’s initial enhanced S90ROIC MPW shuttle are now being accepted with a GDS-II cutoff date in November 2021.

SkyWater’s updated S90ROIC platform provides low noise performance buried channel transistors as well as native transistors, seven layers of metal interconnect, MIM capacitors (oxynitride and high-k), and both room temperature and cryogenic models (77-150K), which are necessary for use in space, aviation, and other high-performance applications. For production designs or dedicated tape-outs, the process also supports stitching for large-format imagers, topside planarized contacts, TSVs for in-pixel backside contact and radiation-tolerant options. Volume ROIC manufacturing is available at SkyWater’s ISO 9001, ITAR-compliant and DMEA-accredited Trusted U.S. production facility.

We are pleased to offer our S90ROIC MPW program to provide secure design support for customers to achieve prototyping, device characterization, and IP validation quickly,” said John Kent, EVP, technology development and design enablement at SkyWater. “Our MPW program addresses our growing aerospace and defense customer demand and provides a secure avenue for creating critical applications for national defense. The program also offers commercial customers the reliability, IP security and high-quality manufacturing that we provide in our U.S.-owned and operated facility.

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Era of 2.2V Supply Coming?

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It appears that Samsung starts to use 2.2V supply in its new pixel designs:


"By reducing a pixel power supply voltage (Vpix), power consumption for pixel was reduced, but full-well capacity (FWC) was also decreased. However, by lowering the conversion gain (CG) and applying a negative voltage to the ground (NGND) of the pixel, FWC of 6000 e- was achieved without any degradation of both charge transfer lags and backflow noise. In addition, the signal linearity in the reduced analog-to-digital (ADC) range was improved by optimizing the source follower (SF). For dark performances, white spots and dark current worsened by NGND were significantly improved by forcing more negative voltage to the transfer gate (TG) when it was turned off."


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SUSS MicroTec and SET Form a Hybrid Bonding Partnership

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SUSS MicroTec and SET signed a joint development agreement to develop a cluster, including several modules such as surface preparation, cleaning, bonding and metrology.

As part of this partnership, SUSS MicroTec’s high-efficiency surface preparation modules and throughput-optimized metrology solutions for post bond overlay verification will be combined with SET’s latest ultra-high accuracy D2W hybrid bonding platform.

Goetz M. Bendele, CEO of SUSS MicroTec, says: “With our partnership with SET, we will be able to offer our customers a complete suite of both die-to-wafer and wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding solutions for the broadest set of heterogeneous integration applications in the advanced backend space. Our die-to-wafer bonding solution, leveraging the combination of SET’s leading-precision die placement technology with SUSS’s proven surface activation, automation, and metrology capabilities, will deliver additional customer value through differentiation in terms of throughput and yield, while at the same time enabling friction-less integration into our customers’ fabrication sites.

Pascal Metzger, CEO of SET, says: “Thanks to several partnerships we had & our more than 10 years experience in hybrid bonding, we have succeeded in taking hybrid bonding from a purely laboratory state to an industrial state. Thus in September 2019, SET launched a stand-alone machine – the NEO HB. Thanks to our new partnership with SUSS MicroTec, we are now going to accelerate the integration and automation phase of the process.

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8th Harvest Imaging Forum

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8th Harvest Imaging Forum is to be held on December 9-10, 2021 in Delft, the Netherlands. The Forum will be a hybrid one meaning that both in-person and remote attendances are possible:

  • One can attend in-person and benefit in an utmost way of the live interaction with the speakers and audience,
  • There will be also a live broadcast of the forum, still interactions with the speakers through a chat box will be made possible,
  • Finally the forum also can be watched on-line at a later date.
The 2021 Harvest Imaging forum has two subjects in the field of solid-state imaging and two speakers. Both speakers are world-level experts in their own fields.
  • "Dark current, dim points and bright spots : coming to the dark side of image sensors"
    Daniel McGrath (GOODiX, USA)


  • "Random Telegraph Signal and Radiation Induced Defects in CMOS Image Sensors"
    Vincent Goiffon (ISAE-SUPAERO, France)

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Fujifilm GFX50S II review so far

Cameralabs        Go to the original article...

The Fujifilm GFX50S Mark II is a medium format mirrorless camera with 51.4 Megapixels and built-in stabilisation. It takes the body of the GFX100S but fits it with the 51.4 Megapixel sensor from the original GFX models to hit a more affordable price point while still delivering more than enough detail for most of us. Here’s my review so far!…

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Samsung Announces 50MP 1um Pixel Sensor with All-Direction PDAF

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BusinessWireSamsung introduces the ISOCELL GN5, the first image sensor to adopt all-directional focusing Dual Pixel Pro technology with two photodiodes in a single 1.0μm pixel.

The ISOCELL GN5 is the industry’s first 1.0μm image sensor to integrate Dual Pixel Pro, an all-directional autofocusing technology. This technology places two photodiodes, the smallest in the industry, within each 1.0μm pixel of the sensor either horizontally or vertically to recognize pattern changes in all directions. With one million phase-detecting multi-directional photodiodes covering all areas of the sensor, the ISOCELL GN5’s autofocusing becomes instantaneous, enabling sharper images in either bright or low-lit environments.

The image sensor also makes use of Samsung’s proprietary pixel technology, which applies Front Deep Trench Isolation (FDTI) on a Dual Pixel product for the first time in the industry. Despite the microscopic photodiode size, FDTI enables each photodiode to absorb and hold more light information, improving the photodiodes’ FWC and decreasing crosstalk within the pixel.

Samples of GN5 are currently available.

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Samsung Announces 200MP 0.64um Pixel Mobile Sensor

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BusinessWireSamsung introduces the ISOCELL HP1, the industry’s first 200MP sensor with 0.64μm pixels. For low-light photography, the ISOCELL HP1 features a newly developed ChameleonCell technology, a pixel-binning that uses a two-by-two, four-by-four or full pixel layout depending on the environment. In a low-lit environment, the HP1 transforms into a 12.5MP image sensor with large 2.56μm pixels by merging 16 neighboring pixels. In bright outdoor environments, the sensor’s 200MP can capture high-definition photos on mobile devices.

The ISOCELL HP1 can take 8K videos at 30 fps with minimum loss in FoV. The HP1 merges four neighboring pixels to bring the resolution down to 50MP or 8,192 x 6,144 to take 8K (7,680 x 4,320) videos without the need to crop or scale down the full image resolution.

Samples of ISOCELL HP1 are currently available.


Samsung also publishes a video PR:

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Samsung 108MP Sensor was Designed in India

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GadgetsNow quotes Balajee Sowrirajan, MD of Samsung Semiconductor India Research (SSIR), saying that  Samsung’s R&D center in Bengaluru, India, led the development of the mobile 108MP ISOCELL HMX sensor launched two years ago.

We did the entire product planning, details of the product, kind of image quality, performance in terms of frame rate, dark light performance, and power dissipation. Our team designed the specifications, did the hardware design, and then sent it to South Korea for manufacturing. It was then sent back to us to develop the software that runs on the product. It was an end-to-end effort.

The key challenge is said to be the uniform power distribution across the sensor to get good sensor pixel characteristics and ensure uniform noise distribution. Time to market was also a huge challenge. The project was initiated in 2018 and needed to be completed by the end of 2019.

SSIR is the largest Samsung R&D center outside of South Korea, with over 2,700 employees. Other than image sensor design, the center develops mobile SOCs, TC chips, software, etc.

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