Image sensors
@imveurope
www.imveurope.com
Shifting sensor landscape
Jessica Rowbury discusses the implications of Sony’s discontinuation of CCD sensors, which some believe reflects the machine vision industry’s move to CMOS technology
A
subject of major discussion within the imaging and machine vision industry this year has been Sony’s decision to
discontinue its line of CCD sensors. Te company will cease operations on its
CCD 200mm wafer line at the Kagoshima Technology Centre in Japan in March 2017, although it will support most CCD sensors up until 2026. Although the announcement is significant,
many commentators feel that it hasn’t come as much of a surprise, and is in keeping with the machine vision industry’s gradual shiſt towards CMOS technology in recent years. ‘Te imaging trends in the machine vision market were clear last year, and really are unrelated to discontinuance announcements by any image sensor manufacturer,’ commented Edwin Ringoot, market segment manager of the machine vision/ITS, image sensor group at On Semiconductor. ‘As the image quality available from CMOS
devices has improved, it has crossed a critical threshold that now allows these devices to be used in many machine vision applications, enabling the market to leverage the increased frame rate and region of interest (ROI) capabilities intrinsic to this technology,’ Ringoot added. Indeed, as opposed to a number of years ago
when CCD technology was a strong contender for machine vision customers due to image quality, sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio, CMOS sensors now boast higher frame rates, better performance in poor light conditions, greater sensitivity, and less image noise, all with improved image quality. And the high volume productions that
have come from the consumer market have driven down the cost of CMOS technology as well as improved its quality and reliability. Tese advances make CMOS a much more viable option for machine vision applications compared to five years ago. ‘CMOS sensors are now really competitive
for machine vision in terms of cost. Even if CMOS is not perfect – CCDs still have some advantages – the ratio between performance and price in CMOS technology make the technology interesting for machine vision users,’ explained Arnaud Destruels, VC product marketing manager at Sony’s Image Sensing Solutions Europe division. ‘Sony’s announcement that it is discontinuing
CCDs will cause a significant acceleration in this trend [towards CMOS] and signal the definitive end of the CCD era,’ added Axel Krepil, head of the Sensor+ division at Framos.
22 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • Yearbook 2015/2016
So, with Sony being a major supplier of CCD
sensors for machine vision camera companies, its means camera users, manufacturers and suppliers either need to turn to other sources of CCDs, or plan to implement CMOS alternatives. According to Krepil, Sony requires that by
the beginning of 2016 distributors must submit a provisional forecast for the best-selling CCD sensors, broken down to component level. ‘During the same period, users will have to develop new CMOS concepts customised to meet their requirements,’ he said. ‘Sensor users need to be able to predict now when they will complete the development of market-ready concepts based on CMOS sensors. We expect all our CCD customers to have a CMOS camera design ready for production by 2017. In five years’ time, only highly specialised applications will be using CCD sensors.’
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