ON Semi Opens Detroit Imaging Technology Center to Support Automotive Customers

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ON Semi opens a new Imaging Technology Center (ITC) in Detroit. The center, co-located with the company’s Detroit Sales Office, will help customers select and implement imaging solutions for automotive and other applications. An ITC lab facilitates the development and tuning of new camera designs. A new ITC Demo Room will also provide an ongoing showcase of the company latest imaging solutions.
2:09 PM

Axcelis Announces High Energy Implanter for Deep Photodiodes

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PRNewswire: Axcelis has released an extended energy range option for its Purion XE high energy implanter. This new option was developed specifically to address the emerging needs of the image sensor and specialty device manufacturers. The extended energy range option is scheduled to be available on new systems in the second quarter of 2016.

Bill Bintz, EVP, marketing and engineering, said, "We're excited to be able to offer our customers the ability to perform ultra-high energy implants for next generation image sensor and power device manufacturing. These implants enable extremely precise and very deep doping profiles, for applications that include deep wells. In the case of image sensors, this allows for more effective separation of photodiodes, reduced noise and dark current, and higher quality color."

John Aldeborgh, EVP, customer operations, commented, "Image sensors and specialty devices are two of the fastest growing market segments in IC manufacturing, due to the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and digital cameras. We see significant opportunity for the Purion XE in these very active markets."

The company's Youtube video talks about the implanters for image sensors:

12:49 PM

Sony Camera Features Switchable OLPF

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PRNewswire: Sony compact FF camera RX1 RII features a switchable OLPF to implement resolution-priority and moire reduction-priority modes:


The company's Youtube video explains how it works:



The camera FF BSI sensor features copper wiring to improve speed 3.5x over the previous generation sensor:

10:47 PM

Nemotek Quits Camera Module Business

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EETimes: Morocco-based camera module maker and Tessera WLP and WLC licensee Nemotek ceased its operations. The comapny was founded in 2008 and funded by Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG), one of the largest investment funds in Morocco. In 2009 the company opened a 12,000 square meter facility including clean room. Production capacity at the facility was around 3,000 wafers per month for WLP and around one million cameras per month for WLC, according to Nemotek's website.
7:46 AM

Qualcomm Sells Vuforia to PTC

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PTC has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Vuforia business from Qualcomm for $65M. Vuforia is the widely adopted AR platform supported by a global ecosystem of developers in 130 countries, and has powered more than 20,000 apps with more than 200 million app installs worldwide. Under terms of the agreement, PTC will acquire the award-winning Vuforia business, including the developer ecosystem. PTC is committed to continued investment in the Vuforia platform and to the ongoing support and growth of the Vuforia ecosystem.

“By delivering powerful computer vision functionality through a simple API, the Vuforia platform has enabled developers and leading brands to deliver award-winning experiences to consumers around the globe,” said Jay Wright, VP of Vuforia, Qualcomm Connected Experiences, Inc. “Vuforia has also captured the attention of industry leaders who envision the potential for augmented reality to transform work. As part of PTC, Vuforia will allow developers to realize this potential through integration with PTC’s industry leading applications and ThingWorx IoT platform.”

Vuforia has wide adoption from leading companies including 37 of the Interbrand 100 and has consistently been awarded for its performance, robustness, and ease of use, including “Best Tool” at Augmented World Expo in each of the last three years. Vuforia supports multiple developer tools, including Eclipse, xCode, and Unity and runs on multiple operating systems and devices, including iOS and Android phones, tablets, and selected mobile eyewear.

Vuforia annual revenue is currently not material to PTC financial results. The transaction is expected to close by the end of calendar year 2015.

A Youtube Qualcomm Vuforia overview:

4:59 AM

Invisage to Unveil QuantumCinema

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InVisage announces an advance screening of its new short film, “Prix,” at the Mill Valley Film Festival. “Prix” was produced on a smartphone image sensor with InVisage’s QuantumFilm technology, and demonstrates for the first time an expanded dynamic range mode called QuantumCinema.

QuantumCinema is a capability specific to InVisage’s QuantumFilm camera sensor that allows for more details to be captured simultaneously in both low and bright light. Conventional digital image sensors rely on silicon to sense light linearly and therefore saturate when too much light enters the sensor. In contrast, photochemical film has a non-linear response that can preserve details in more extreme light conditions. With the greater shift from film to digital cameras, digital camera users have had to compromise on dynamic range in exchange for convenience. QuantumFilm sensors, however, behave more like film in that they also have a non-linear response to light, which allows for the expanded dynamic range of QuantumCinema. The screening of “Prix” will mark the first time footage taken in QuantumCinema mode is shown to the public.

“InVisage is bringing amazing cinema-quality images to smartphones and mobile devices,” said InVisage President and CEO Jess Lee. “With this panel and the worldwide release of ‘Prix,’ we’re kicking off a broader conversation on the huge impact camera technologies have had on film and will continue to have in future.”

The company publishes its Prix cinema trailer on Youtube:



Invision's Facebook page has a nice collection behind the scene pictures:

4:43 AM

Workshop on CMOS Image Sensors for High Performance Applications

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CNES, ESA, AIRBUS DEFENCE & SPACE, THALES ALENIA SPACE, SODERN co-sponsor the 4th Toulouse CMOS image sensors workshop “CMOS Image Sensors for high erformance applications,” to be held in Toulouse, France on November 18-19, 2015. The free of charge mandatory workshop registration is open on its web site. The program is quite large for a 2 day event:

SESSION 1 CMOS FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS:

The Status of ESA supported Visible and NIR/SWIR CMOS Image Sensor developments
N. Nelms, European Space Agency.

Space qualification of the CIS115, a 3 MPixel CMOS APS for the JANUS camera on Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer
M.Soman, E. Allanwood, A. Holland, M. Leese, J. Gow, K. Stefanov, Centre for Electronic Imaging, Open University.
H. Michaelis, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Planetary Research.

Highly integrated, backside illuminated CMOS image sensor for EnMAP VNIR camera
M. Mücke, C. Neumann, F. Gansmann, B. Sang, OHB System AG
H. Venus, A. Eckardt, R. Reulke, DLR Institute of Optical Sensor

SESSION 2 CMOS TDI:

CNES CMOS Roadmap and new results in CCD-on-CMOS Test Chip for TDI applications
C. Virmontois, A. Materne, CNES, B. Patin, Sophia Conseil

An Innovative Large Scale Linear CMOS Image Sensor Architecture
MY. Yeh, M. Huang, Jer Ling, National Space Organization(NSPO)

2nd Generation CMOS Charge Transfer TDI: Results on Proton Irradiation
F. Mayer, F. Barbier, J. Endicott, e2v semiconductors,
J. Rushton, K. Stefanov, Open University

Backside illuminated CMOS-TDI image sensor for space applications
N.Ben-Ari, O. Cohen, E. Ilan, S. Elkind, I. Nevo, R. Talmor, N. Shiloah, Y. Chaham, O. Cohen, G. Zohar and R. Dobromislin, SemiConductor Devices (SCD)

Time Delay Integration embedded CCD platform development
P.Boulenc, J. Robbelein, L. Haspeslagh, M. Rosmeulen, L. Wu, S. Terryn, V. Malandruccolo, J. Borremans, P. De Moor, IMEC

SESSION 3 LOW NOISE, HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE:

Low temperature measurements of a large-area, backthinned, and low-noise CMOS sensors
S.Johnson, J. Pratlong, A. Ibrahim, P. Jerram, P. Jorden, e2v technologies
S. Wang and M. Lehner, ASIAA

PERCIVAL: A Back Side Illuminated, Wafer Scale, Low Noise CMOS Image Sensor for the Detection of Low Energy X-Rays
I. Sedgwick on behalf of the PERCIVAL Collaboration (DESY, DLS, Elettra, PAL, RAL)

High Dynamic Range technics for SUPERCAM Remote Micro Imager
A. Toulemont, C. Virmontois, A. Bardoux, CNES

A 120dB dynamic range image sensor with single readout using in pixel HDR
J. Caranana, Pyxalis

QLog – Single Electron Detection Capable Logarithmic CMOS Pixel
Y. NI, New Imaging Technologies SA

SESSION 4 RADIATIONS & IN-FLIGHT HERITAGE:

Radiation results obtained from the CMOS sensor designed for FCI-VisDa detector
R. Simpson, N. Swift, J. Pratlong, A. Pike, P. Jerram, e2v.

Single Event Upset Sensitivity of D-Flip Flop in Infrared Image Sensors for Low Temperature Applications
L. Artola, G. Hubert, ONERA, O. Gilard, M. Boutillier, B. Baradat, CNES
S. Ducret, F. Perrier, N. Ricard, Sofradir, P. Garcia, G. Vignon, TRAD

Examination on long term variation of nonlinearity for GOCI CMOS image sensor
G. Kang, S. Shin, S. Yong, Korean Aerospace Research Institute
P. Coste, P. Luquet, Airbus Defence & Space

SESSION 5 LANDSCAPE OF EUROPEAN FOUNDRIES:

Integration of high-performance optical detection devices in a standard 0.35µm CMOS Process
W. Brockherde, Fraunhofer IMS

IMEC’s offering for space imagers
P. De Moor, IMEC

STMicroelectronics Imaging premium foundry offering for a strong European Imaging industry
C. Gachon, T. Lachaud, STMicroelectronics

SESSION 6 CMOS for INFRA-RED DETECTION:

Digital Focal Plane arrays for Enhanced Cooled Infrared Detectors Performances
G.Decaens, V. Badet, L. Baud, F. Advent, P. Mejean, A. Maltere, S. Aufranc, G. Chalet, R. Cotte, S. Parola, N. Ricard, SOFRADIR

Continuous improvements of ROIC design for space infrared applications
N.Ricard, P. Maillart, G. Decaens, L. Baud, F. Advent, F. Salvetti, A. Maltere, S. Aufranc, SOFRADIR

NIRCA cryogenic test results for focal plane array detectors
P.Påhlsson, D. Meier, H. K. Otnes Berge, P. Øya, D. Steenari, A. Olsen, A. Hasanbegovic, M. A. Altan, B. Najafiuchevler, J. Talebi, S. Azman, C. Gheorghe, T. M. Johansen, J. Ackermann, G. Mæhlum, Integrated Detector Electronics AS

Image Signal Processor for bolometers IR detectors
F. Bonnaire, P. Robert, T.Rahaga, ULIS

TUTORIAL:

The Pinned Photodiode
by Nobukazu Teranishi (University of Hyogo / Shizuoka University)
Winner of the 2013 J.J. Ebers Award, and 2013 Yamazaki-Teiichi Prize in the field of semiconductors and semiconductor devices for the Development of Image Sensors with Pinned Photodiode

SESSION 7 PIXEL ARCHITECTURES & PERFORMANCE:

Creapyx: An innovative pixel evaluation platform
J. Michelot, PYXALIS

Dark Current Blooming in Pinned Photodiode CMOS Image Sensors
J.-M. Belloir, ISAE, CNES, CEA, J.-B. Lincelles, ISAE, ADS, A. Pelamatti, CNES, ADS
V. Goiffon, P. Magnan, ISAE, C. Virmontois, O. Gilard, CNES, P. Paillet, CEA DAM

On the CMOS Pixel Based on the Deep Trapping Gate Principle: Prospects and Challenges
N.T. Fourches, CEA

SESSION 8 PROCESS:

UV-White-Yellow Bayer-like pattern imager
B.Dierickx, Q.Yao, J.Zhu, P.Coppejans, R.Zhang, G.Cai, P.Gao, B.Luyssaert, B.Spinnewyn, Caeleste

Design and integration of planar lenses dedicated to Near Infrared detection (1,064 µm) for CMOS image sensors
T.Lopez, S. Massenot, M. Estribeau, P. Magnan, Institut Superieur de l'Aeronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO) JL. Pelouard, Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures (LPN-CNRS)

Integrated diffractive optics for pixel performance enhancement
V. Rochus, S. Guerrieri, J. Van Olmen, V. Paraschiv, I. De Wolf, P. De Moor and X. Rottenberg, IMEC

Low dark current backside illuminated CMOS image sensors for high performance applications
S.Lavizzari, S. Guerrieri, C. Kerner and L. Haspeslagh, IMEC

Exploration of high density interconnect 3D stacking for SPAD arrays
V. Lalucaa, P. Martin-Gonthier, S. Rolando, F. Raymundo, P. Magnan, Institut Superieur de l'Aeronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO)
4:16 AM

...

Mariners Repository


Knowledge is an endless frontier,ever expanding  and spread all over.Some part has been digitized,but a large part still exists in a published format. 

Learning is a lifelong process, incomplete in ones lifetime even to gather a drop in the vast ocean of knowledge. 

A proactive approach supported by properly understood concepts is more relevant in this present scenario to move ahead .
  
The list of concepts is endless and it takes time and effort to condense and present them in a simple format read and easily understood by all.

This site is intended for Students, Academia , Working professionals and others interested , to provide a one stop ready reference into various concepts and working practices.

This is a compilation of my research and notes  over a period of more than two decades updated on a regular basis , presented in a simple conceptual fashion , aiming to make it a one stop ready reference for all.

It will always be my sincere endeavor to update all articles as per latest technical advances , and improve the quality through feedback from Academia, Students, Colleagues ,Professionals and Fraternity of the industry.

9:03 AM

Falcon Eye Camera Offers Color Night Vision with KClux CMOS Sensor

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Tokyo, Japan-based Komamura Corp. offers a color night vision camera under Falcon Eye brand. The company's brochure and the FAQ offers quite a lot of info about the KClux image sensor in it:

"The Falcon Eye cameras do not work with IR illumination or an image intensifier unit as most night vision equipment does.

The Falcon Eye cameras are build with a new type of CMOS sensor and combined with the advanced electronics and image controlling software it has been possible to create this unique system with a light sensitivity way beyond what other night vision systems can deliver.

The proprietary KClux CMOS sensor and KCnoise 2D/3D noise reduction technologies are the secrets behind the revolutionary KC-2000 cameras.

High quality viewing, video recording and photo capturing during day and night with ISO 2,000,000. Can even record through dark tinted glass.

All parts 100% designed, manufactured and assembled in Japan including sensor, housing, and optics."


And then, Falcon Eye cameras have a dedicated Youtube channel with many video demos:





Thanks to BC for the info!
4:32 PM

Chronocam Startup Presents Event-Driven Sensor

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EETimes: Chronocam AS (Paris, France) is a 2014 spin-off of University Pierre et Marie Curie and University of Vienna. The startup is based on 15-year long research on asynchronous image sensors.

"The initial image sensor is QVGA resolution (320 by 240 pixels) with a pixel size of 30-microns on a side and sampling circuit alongside each pixel. The sensor is not clocked and does not send frames of data, said Christop Posch, chief technology officer. Each of the pixels in the array acts independently and sends information that is time-based. In addition, the pixel only sends information when there is a significant change. The result is scene-dependent data compression that results in time-continuous but sparse stream of events sent over an asynchronous data bus. Chronocam calls the technology CCAM EyeOT.

Combined performance figures include up-date speeds equivalent to 100k frames per second, a dynamic range of greater than 120dB. The video compression is a factor of 100 up from conventional image sensors and a power consumption of less than 10mW."

The first sensor uses UMC process, and has a size of 1cm by 0.8cm. The company is working on the pixel size reduction.


The company fundings include ones of €750,000 from Robert Bosch Venture Capital and CEA Investissement.
7:20 AM

Can Technology Stop Mass Shootings?

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The mass shooting at Umpqua Community College on Oct. 1 brought a violent end to the lives of nine victims (eight students and one professor), besides the death of the perpetrator, Christopher Harper-Mercer, at the hands of police called to the scene.  This tragedy has inspired a predictable chorus of editorials calling for something to be done about such things. 

Two voices heard on opposite sides of the political fence are E. J. Dionne, based at the Washington Post, and Charles Krauthammer, a familiar face on Fox TV.  In a recent column, Dionne decries the standard knee-jerk responses of his fellow liberals who call for gun control laws that they know won't pass Congress.  He rightly regards this as a futile gesture, especially now that Republicans control both houses of Congress and the National Rifle Association's influence is strengthened thereby.  Dionne's idea is to focus on gunmakers, who sell almost half their output to governments of various forms (federal, state, and local) and who might start making safer guns if that segment of the market demanded them. 

Safer how?  Dionne mentions two technologies that might mitigate unlawful gun use:  smart guns that can be used only by their owner, and microstamping of guns and bullets.  Several gunmakers have marketed various versions of smart guns, which typically use some add-on such as a magnetic ring or RFID chip worn by the owner to allow use of the gun.  These things are not popular with the gun lobby, and a sea change in attitudes would have to happen for any one of the smart-gun technologies to become common.  Microstamping is a patented technique of engraving a tiny serial number on the firing pin of a gun, which is then stamped into the cartridge when the gun fires.  If the cartridge is recovered, it can be matched with the microstamped gun.  Although California passed a law requiring microstamping of semi-automatic guns, it specifically exempted law-enforcement weapons (there goes the government tie-in), and two gun manufacturers have quit selling semi-automatic weapons in that state, citing the microstamping requirement as a major reason. 

The main weakness of Dionne's technological fixes has nothing to do with the virtues or flaws of a given new technology.  As Charles Krauthammer pointed out in his column last week, even if every new gun sold was smart enough to shoot only at truly bad guys, there were some 350 million guns in the U. S. as of last year (more than one for every man, woman, and child), and the only effective gun law that would stand a chance of reducing mass shootings would have to round up the ones out there already.  Krauthammer cites Australia's compulsory buy-back program as an example of this, but for a number of reasons it would never work in the U. S.  To stop such a program here, all that gun proponents would need to do is to cite the Second Amendment, which the U. S. Supreme Court has interpreted as granting citizens the right to bear arms.

And that gets to the tradeoff involved in this situation.  Australia decided that the risk of gun-related crime was so great that they sacrificed the freedom of average citizens to bear arms, by and large.  In this country, the right of private citizens to own guns is valued more highly, and the result is that we have to run the risk of unstable individuals now and then getting hold of a gun and shooting lots of people.

Is that problem any worse now than it has been?  Every mass shooting is a unique tragedy, but if we look at them in the same light as other unlikely but spectacularly awful ways to die such as airplane crashes, the problem takes on a different look.  According to the Stanford Mass Shootings in America Database, a comprehensive but not exhaustive study of mass shootings in the U. S. since 1966, 1011 people have died in mass shootings in the last 49 years.  To put that into perspective, more than 1300 passengers have died in commercial airline crashes in the U. S. since only 1996, although many of those fatalities happened in the 9/11 terrorist attack.  Graphing the Stanford data versus time produces a curve that has no clear upward or downward trend—just noticeable spikes that don't seem to be clustering toward the recent past. 

Maybe it's coldhearted to view these things as statistics, but one way to view this is that as a society, we have decided to tolerate a certain risk of a small number of unstable people getting hold of a gun as the price we pay for the freedom of the vast majority of well-behaved, law-abiding gun owners to keep their firearms.  Krauthammer speculates as to how you could stop the isolated mass shooters, but most of them prior to their flame-outs never do anything illegal enough to warrant taking their guns away before they come out shooting.  What has emerged about Christopher Harper-Mercer's background has eerie resonances with that of another mass shooter, Adam Lanza, who walked into a schoolroom in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and killed 26 people after shooting his mother, and then killed himself on Dec. 12, 2012.  Both were loners with absent fathers whose mothers struggled to socialize their autistic-spectrum sons.  But if having minor autistic tendencies is made a crime, we'll have to lock up a lot of engineers.

These matters come close to home here at my university, just down the road from Austin where Charles Whitman inaugurated the modern era of mass shootings in 1966 from the famed University of Texas tower.  In its most recent session, the Texas legislature passed a law making it legal for qualified concealed-weapons owners to carry their firearms into classrooms and other buildings at public and private universities.  The idea seems to be that if a nut case suspects that somebody besides himself may have a gun in the room, he'll at least hesitate before he starts anything.  Even if he does, maybe dead-eye Annie there in the back row will take him out before he gets too far. 

Needless to say, I don't look forward to the Shootout at the Mitte Engineering Building taking place in my classroom.  Fortunately, you have to be 21 to get a concealed-carry permit, and so only a small minority of our students would qualify. 

We can count on oceanic news coverage of any mass shooting, but it's hard to keep a sense of perspective while the media rattles on.  Unless the great majority of gun owners in the U. S. decide it's just not a good idea to have a gun around, those 350 million weapons are not going to go away any time soon.  And anybody without a serious criminal record (and even some with one) can still get one of them.  Current technological fixes for the problem simply don't seem to have the political traction to get very far.  Maybe smart, unobtrusive metal detectors with RFID chips for people authorized to carry concealed weapons could work, but that would be a lot of expense for an unlikely problem.  In the meantime, I'm going to act like nobody in my classroom has a gun.  But all the same, I'm glad my podium is close to the exit.

Sources:  E. J. Dionne's column "Let's focus on gun makers and smart-gun technology" was carried by the Austin American-Statesman on Oct. 9, 2015.  Charles Krauthammer's "Massacre begets charade with confiscation a no-go" appeared in the same publication on Oct. 10.  The Stanford Mass Shootings in America Database is available to anyone (after a check-in procedure) at https://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-america.  I also referred to Wikipedia articles on smart guns, microstamping, and airline fatality statistics. 

My summary

...
I am a graduate student of Baluchistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS) Quetta in department of Petroleum and Gas Engineering. I earned my degree in August 2014 
During my years of education at the BUITEMS University of Quetta Baluchistan, I have participated in several projects with my Lecturers/ Professors. In addition, I evaluated different research works and wrote technical papers. I am an active member of Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), Society of Exploration Geologists (SEG), American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and RIGZONE. Being the member of Society of Petroleum Engineers, Quetta Student Chapter, I participated in both social and technical events that were organized by the departments.
I am a highly motivated person with good analytical and communication skills. I am fluent in English, Urdu and Pashto and have good technical skills.

8:00 AM

My clock

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7:55 AM

Rambus Wins "Best Paper Award" for its Lensless Sensor Paper

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Rambus paper "Ultra-miniature, computationally efficient diffractive visual-bar-position sensor" by Mehjabin Monjur, Leonidas Spinoulas, Patrick R. Gill and David G. Stork presented at SENSORCOMM 2015 in Italy, wins "Best Paper Award."

“Computationally efficient algorithms then process this sensed information to yield an accurate estimate of the position of the bar. The optical grating is very small (120 μm diameter), has large angle of view (140◦), and extremely large depth of field (0.5 mm to infinity). The design of this sensor demonstrates the power of end-to-end optimization (optics and digital processing) for high accuracy and very low computational cost in a new class of ultra- miniature computational sensors.”
11:08 PM

Arctic Sea Ice 2015 - update 11

...
Arctic sea ice extent has been growing rapidly recently. The image below shows extent up to October 9, 2015 (marked by red dot).


Below is a comparison of sea ice thickness as on October 6, for the years (from left to right) 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The comparison shows that decline has been strongest where sea ice used to be the thickest, i.e. over 3 meters thick.


One of the reasons why the thickest Arctic sea ice has declined so dramatically over the years is the rising ocean heat that is melting the sea ice from underneath. The image below illustrates the situation on October 5, 2015, when sea surface temperature anomalies were as high as 6.4°C, 7.4°C and 7.3°C (11.5°F 13.2°F and 13.1°F) off the North American coast, and as high as 9.4°C (16.8°F) near Svalbard.


Water temperatures are very high in the Arctic, as further illustrated by the image below showing Arctic sea surface temperature anomalies as at October 9, 2015.



Rising ocean heat is further illustrated by the graph below, showing August sea surface temperature anomalies on the Northern Hemisphere over the years.
The situation is very dangerous, due to feedbacks and their interaction. The thicker sea ice used to act as a buffer, consuming ocean heat in the melting process. Without thicker sea ice, ocean heat threatens to melt the sea ice from below right up to the surface, causing the entire sea ice to collapse. As the sea ice declines, more open water will give rise to stronger winds and waves.

Furthermore, sunlight that was previously reflected back into space will instead be absorbed by the water, causing rapid rise of the temperature of the water. In places such as the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, the water is on a average only 50 m deep, so warmer water is able to reach the seafloor more easily there. As ocean heat keeps rising, there's a growing risk that heat will reach the Arctic Ocean seafloor and destabilize methane hydrates in sediments at the Arctic Ocean seafloor.

The image below shows a non-linear trend that is contained in the temperature data that NASA has gathered over the years, as described in an earlier post. A polynomial trendline points at global temperature anomalies of over 4°C by 2060. Even worse, a polynomial trend for the Arctic shows temperature anomalies of over 4°C by 2020, 6°C by 2030 and 15°C by 2050, threatening to cause major feedbacks to kick in, including albedo changes and methane releases that will trigger runaway global warming that looks set to eventually catch up with accelerated warming in the Arctic and result in global temperature anomalies of 16°C by 2052.

[ click on image to enlarge ]
The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan.

Comparison of sea ice thickness on October 6, for the years (from left to right) 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, shows that...

Posted by Sam Carana on Saturday, October 10, 2015

Yole: Apple Camera Innovations Slowing Down?

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i-Micronews: Yole Developpement analysts Pierre Cambou and Guillaume Girardin wrote an analysis of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus camera technology. Their conclusion is that Apple camera module team becomes less innovative over time:

"We’ll have to wait another year for the iPhone’s big hardware update. Video is the new innovation paradigm, followed most likely by 3D imaging within a few years. Now that the competition is closing in on Apple’s proposition, Apple must make a significant technological leap forward. Our take on this is that such a leap is definitely possible, and even underway. It could involve the Linx technology Apple acquired last year, the integration of STMicroelectronics’ laser ranging technology, and probably even more..."

11:44 PM

Melexis ToF Sensor to Use Sony CIS Process

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Melexis signs a licensing agreement with Sony to keep using Softkinetic technology in its automotive ToF sensors. Melexis has been Softkinetic licensee for a number of years for products such as the MLX75023, said to be the world’s first automotive ToF sensor in production.

Now, Melexis will collaborate with Sony to further expand this technology. The products derived from this collaboration will be fabricated at Sony’s world-class wafer fabrication facility in image sensor technology and support its offering in the area of gesture recognition.

Francoise Chombar, CEO Melexis, comments: “The combination of Sony's superior image sensor technology and our year-long automotive sensor know-how and experience provides an exciting new platform for enhancing the Time-of-Flight technology. This innovative technology could change dramatically the way drivers communicate with their vehicles. No more touch screens or knobs, but a simple gesture might suffice in the future.”

8:19 AM

ON Semi, GEO Semi, and GainSpan to Collaborate on IoT

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BusinessWire: ON Semiconductor is collaborating with GainSpan and GEO Semiconductor to rapidly respond to the growing potential of the Internet of Things (IoT). Through this partnership, customers will benefit from the leadership each company has shown in its respective field: ON Semiconductor’s advanced and expansive portfolio of image sensors, GEO’s highly cost-effective and power efficient image signal processing technology, and GainSpan’s expertise in low power Wi-Fi solutions.

A highly optimized IoT video reference design based on AR0330 image sensor is the trio’s first collaboration. The GS-AR0330-Based Full HD Video, available via GainSpan and its distributors, targets smart 1080p video streaming over Wi-Fi.
9:21 PM