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Technology Stocks : Bookham Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ownstock who wrote (314)	1/7/2004 11:24:02 PM
From: tech101	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 376

SiGe is a relatively new technology (the Big Blue made the most contribution to it?). Because silicon and germanium are chemically similar, so existing equipment can be switched to SiGe chips with only minimal modifications. Applying the SiGe layer is just one additional step in the chip manufacturing process, easily inserted into the production sequence. So CMOS technology can indeed be applied to the SiGe chips. As far as CCD vs CMOS, it is a quite different story. CMOS image sensor is simpler, less expensive, easy to integrate with other CMOS circuitry on the same chip, consumes less power, but generates more noise than CCD. But CCD cannot be integrated with CMOS, so it has to be on a separate chip. 95% camera still use CCD. Canon is the pioneer in CMOS and they use the CMOS sensor in their entire lines of digital camera from D30 to D60, 300D, and 10D - and beat all competitors, including Nikon, in the digital camera market. Usually, a 11, or even 6.3 m-pixel digital camera can compare with a 135 optical camera in quality in my opinion. More and more professional photographers are giving up their old optical and never look back, as far as I know.