Ahead of Sony in Image Sensor Technology
Samsung Electronics has developed a 100-million-pixel image sensor ahead of Sony, the leader in the global image sensor market.
Samsung Electronics announced on Aug. 12 that it has released the industry's first 108-milion-pixel mobile image sensor “ISOCELL Bright HMX.” Samsung became the first company to tear down the barrier of 100 million pixels in the image sensor industry. The company plans to start volume production of the new product in August.
The mobile image sensor is based on ultra-small 0.8 μm pixels and has 1.6 times more pixels than a 64-million-pixel product released in May. The megapixel mobile image sensor allows mobile devices to capture the details of images that could not be expressed by current mobile devices, Samsung explained.
In addition, 1/1.33-inch sensors were used to increase light receiving areas and uses Tetra Cell technology that combines four pixels into one larger pixel. The product is designed to take bright and clear high-definition photos even in a dark environment.
In particular, Samsung Electronics partnered with Xiaomi to launch the product. "We have worked closely with Samsung Electronics since the beginning of the development of the new image sensor. We wanted to become the first company to apply an 108-million-pixel image sensor, which many thought could only be applied to premium digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras, to a small and slim smartphone," Xiaomi co-founder Lin Bin said.
The new image sensor represents another great stride Samsung Electronics has achieved since it declared a vision in April to become the No. 1 company in the global non-memory semiconductor business. It has launched the automotive semiconductor Exynos Auto 8890 for the Audi A4 and new power semiconductors. The Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology recently released its On-Device AI lightweight algorithm which reduced power consumption while increasing artificial intelligence (AI) operation speed eight-fold.