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Tower links with Chinese image sensor supplier |
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Nov 02, 2006 at 03:24 PM |
 Israel's Tower Semiconductor foundry is to team up with a Chinese company, SuperPix, to begin production of two image sensor products - a 2Mpixel UXGA and a VGA device. Initially, the products will be marketed for cellular phone and smart phone cameras to be retailed within the Chinese market, with projections to eventually expand sales internationally.
The two companies believe that the Chinese market is the fastest growing retail customer base for cellular products with an annual market for cellular and smart phone image sensors in China projected to exceed 200 million units in 2008 and 300 million in 2010. Business volumes of the image sensors are expected to top $500 million.
Tower has a CMOS image sensor ‘Advanced Photo Diode' technology (the company uses the abbreviation APD that is normally used for avalanche photodiodes). The company says that its CMOS image sensor deep sub-micron process enables improved optical and electrical performance of ultra-small pixels, creating opportunities for manufacture of small, cost-effective camera modules. The devices are manufactured at Tower's Fab2 in a 0.18-micron technology using Tower's pixel intellectual property (IP) and the company's optically optimized multilayer metallization (OptiMuM) to achieve ‘dramatically better optical sensitivity' by reducing the stack height from silicon to microlens.
Tower manufactures integrated circuits with geometries ranging from 1.0 to 0.13 microns at two manufacturing facilities. Fab 2 features 0.18-micron and below standard and specialized process technologies, and has a capacity of up to 15,000 200mm wafers per month.
SuperPix Micro Technology (Beijing), set up in April 2005, provides CMOS image sensors (CIS) and related SOC chips. SuperPix's core technology includes pixel and low-power analogue circuits, image signal processing and low-power wireless communications.
By Dr Mike Cooke
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