From: ken Watson (watsok@frii.com)
Date: 09/13/00-10:01:21 AM Z
This is a marketing release. Remember...there are lair's, Damn lair's and
marketing people;<)
High-pixel, low-noise CMOS image sensor stalks CCDs
By Anthony Cataldo
EE Times
(09/07/00, 12:54 p.m. EST) TOKYO - After more than a year of stealthy
preparation, startup Y Media Inc. has come out of hiding to trumpet a
3-million-pixel CMOS image sensor that aims for nothing less than dethroning
the charged-coupled devices (CCDs) that are the heart of today's most
advanced digital still cameras and digital video cameras.
One of the few to develop a low-power CMOS sensor with such a high pixel
count, Y Media is betting the combination of high resolution and proprietary
low-noise technology will usher in a new class of cameras capable of
high-quality video and still images.
"We can finally show that CMOS imagers will displace CCDs," said president
Ian Olsen, founder and chief executive officer of Y Media (Irvine, Calif.).
"We'll enable companies to go from discrete to hybrid cameras that can do
digital stills and video. What's also important is that we're going up in
resolution."
Based on 0.25-micron design rules, the company's YM-3170A CMOS sensor has a
2,056 x 1,544 pixel array (2,048 x 1,536 visible) on a half-inch format.
Each pixel is 3.3 x 3.3 microns - the smallest among available CMOS sensors,
the company said. Sampling will begin in November, and Y Media officials
said they expect consumer electronics companies in Japan to ship first
products with the sensors early next year. Y Media said the cost will be
competitive with imaging devices capable of similar resolutions.
Y Media is touting several architectural innovations that allow it to
combine pixel processing with analog functionality on its CMOS sensor,
though company officials declined to elaborate on the device's unique
architectural features. Y Media does not have any U.S. patents registered,
but has several pending, Olsen said.
One of the chip's best attributes is noise performance, a nagging problem
for CMOS imagers that has prevented some designs from migrating down the
process technology curve. Y Media, however, claims it has developed an
architecture and process technology recipe that actually surpasses the noise
performance of CCDs. The company declined to reveal its noise benchmarks,
however.
With noise in check, Y Media said it was then free to work on features to
enable full-frame rate video. "For CCDs to run at high frame rates, the
noise goes up proportionally to the frame rate," Olsen said. "Ours is flat
from 1 frame per second to 30 frames per second. And our imagers will go to
120 frames per second."
"With CCDs the charge is dumped down the line to one single output
amplifier, and that's the noise bane of a CCD," said Greg Urban, founder and
vice president of marketing and sales for Y Media. "In CMOS it can be put
anywhere and optimized so that there's no heavy-duty swing with a single
output amplifier."
Y Media officials declined to explain how the charge can be handled better
in CMOS, though they suggested there could be places to dump the charge in
various regions of the chip. "In CMOS, we can make intelligent columns and
rows that can compensate for the noise and provide for added features to
enhance the pixels in a lot of ways," Olsen said.
Another benefit of low noise is that it allowed Y Media to use a more
advanced 0.25-micron process technology, which it developed with foundry
partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. The process allows Y
Media to pack more pixels onto one chip, in contrast to other CMOS imager
sensors that must use design rules no finer than 0.5-micron to ensure good
noise performance, Olsen said.
The company claims the combination of low noise and high pixel count enables
full-frame video with a 4:3 aspect ratio that approaches film quality. The
device can also be programmed to handle different aspect ratios like 3:2 and
the 16:9 HDTV format, as well as features like stabilization, pan and zoom.
In addition, the sensor is capable of VGA (640 x 480-pixel) resolution
sub-sampling when previewing an image or video on an LCD.
Y Media plans to publicly demonstrate the sensor's capabilities here on
Sept. 14.
Because the chip uses CMOS technology, Y Media was able to integrate
functions that are normally handled by companion ASICs or processors. These
include timing generators, voltage regulators and sub-sampling processors.
Moreover, use of CMOS results in a big reduction in power consumption
compared to a CCD, which can burn up to 1.5 watts of power, while the
YM-3170A maxes out at 120-milliwatts, Olsen said.
Founded in March 1999, Y Media claims to have an experienced team of
researchers and engineers who collectively have designed 150 imagers while
working in previous positions. Many of its 38 employees come from defense
and aerospace companies like Lockheed, Ford Aerospace, Hughes and JPL.
Founders Olsen and Urban, as well as Japan regional director Norio Tsuruta,
hail from Conexant, which designs and produces its own CMOS image sensors.
Even with these attributes, Y Media is likely to face stiff competition in
Japan, where it hopes to establish a market position. Many well-known
suppliers of digital cameras also design and sell image sensors -
Matsushita, Sony and Sharp. Others, like Canon and Fuji Photo Film, often
design their own high-resolution image sensors. Canon, for example,
announced a new camera with its own 3-million pixel CMOS sensor, while
Olympus unveiled a CCD camera with 4-million pixel resolution.
Y Media officials remain confident, saying they already have a number of
undisclosed top-tier companies that will design in their sensor for products
coming out early next year. To kick off manufacturing and bring up
engineering services in Japan, the company recently secured $7.5 million in
second-round venture capital funding from Enterprise Partners, TechFund
Capital and Chase Capital Partners.
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