Ken, thanks for that post. Here is a DCAM article from the "Cybertimes" section of the NY Times which refs LSI; But unfortunately it discusses extensive Japanese plans to use CMOS technology, rather than LSI's SOC offering for their digitial cameras..hope they don't succeed!! ... sorry for posting it all -- not sure I could get a link..
New Technology Promises 'Camera on a Chip'
By ANDREW POLLACK
TOKYO -- The digital still camera that Toshiba will
start selling this summer does not look much different
from dozens of cameras that have flooded the market
lately. But on the inside, the camera holds what could be
the seeds of a revolution.
The camera is the first by a major Japanese electronics
company to use a new type of image-capturing device that
might one day make possible the exquisitely tiny
camera-on-a-chip.
Such cheap micro-cameras could be plastered everywhere
as security monitors or be placed in the rear bumpers of
cars to help drivers back up. They might even make
possible the camera in the glasses frame used by Tom
Cruise in the movie "Mission: Impossible." And instead of
highlighting a passage in a book with a colored marker, a
student of the future might take a snapshot of the passage with a camera built into a pen.
Until now, camcorders and digital still cameras, which store images electronically rather than on film,
have captured images using a chip called a charge-coupled device, or CCD.
But these devices have some drawbacks. They use a lot of power, requiring bulky batteries, and are
made with a process different from that used to make other microelectronic circuits. That makes it
difficult to combine a CCD with other circuits on the same piece of silicon.
The LSI Logic Corporation, for instance, will introduce a chip that has almost all the circuitry
needed for a digital still camera -- but not the CCD, which must still remain separate.
The Toshiba Corporation's imaging chip, however, is made using a process known as CMOS
(pronounced sea moss), the same process used for making many other integrated circuits.
That process could result in economies of scale by allowing the imaging chips to be made on big
production lines used for other chips. It should make it possible to combine on a single piece of
silicon the image sensor, timing controls, image compression and memory needed for a camera --
producing the camera on a chip. CMOS imaging chips also use far less power than CCD's.
One big application could be video cameras small and cheap enough to be
built into every personal computer, allowing PC users to hold video
conferences. Creative Laboratories Inc., the Singapore company known for
its Sound Blaster audio boards, is introducing a PC video conferencing
system using a CMOS imaging chip from VLSI Vision Inc. in Edinburgh.
Sensors using CMOS, which stands for complementary
metal-oxide-semiconductor, could also tilt the balance of power in the
industry, allowing Americans and Europeans a chance to catch up with the
Japanese, who now dominate the market both for CCD's and for the
camcorders and digital cameras that use them.
"CMOS imaging allows other companies to get into the imaging business,"
said Bryan Ackland, a researcher for Lucent Technologies, the equipment
spinoff of AT&T. Lucent has been doing research on CMOS imaging chips
but has not yet decided whether to make a product, he said.
The Sony Corporation and the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company are
the leading suppliers of the charge-coupled devices, about 20 million of
which were produced for use in cameras and camcorders last year.
Including simpler devices used in fax machines and other office equipment,
the total market was estimated at about $650 million.
But the CMOS sensors have been pioneered by two start-ups, VLSI , in
Scotland, and Photobit L.L.C. in La Crescenta, Calif., a spinoff from the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, which is nearby. Other start-ups include Omnivision
Technologies in San Jose, Calif., and Suni Imaging Microsystems in
Mountain View, Calif.
Numerous big American companies, including Kodak, Polaroid,
Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Intel and National Semiconductor, are working
on CMOS imaging chips, said Eric R. Fossum, chief scientist at Photobit,
who introduced the technology to many of those companies when he was at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By contrast, he said, when he approached
Japanese companies a few years ago, "the reaction was fairly uniformly uninterested."
That might no longer be the case. Toshiba has become a leader in the new imaging technology.
"We've suddenty got a shot of credibility from Toshiba," said Peter B. Denyer, chief executive of
VLSI.
Matsushita is also working on CMOS imagers that would be combined on a chip with circuitry for
compressing the images, said Akira Matsuzawa, a researcher on the project.
Both types of imaging chips have an array of cells representing the individual
picture elements, or pixels. When light falls on the surface of the silicon cells,
it is converted into an electric charge in proportion to the brightness of the
light.
Cheers! TSO |
