New Chip Designed with Micron’s Industry-Leading 1.75-micron Pixel
Micron Technology, Inc. (NYSE:MU), today unveiled a 1/4-inch, 3-megapixel complete camera system-on-chip (SOC) sensor for mobile handsets. Unique to the market, Micron has designed an anti-shake feature into the sensor, which greatly reduces image blurring often found in camera phone pictures due to camera shake.
Blurry images are especially common in low-light situations where the shutter is open for longer periods of time to collect enough light to take the picture. A camera phone designed with Micron’s new sensor (product number MT9T111) can dramatically reduce image blur by automatically activating the anti-shake feature when sensing camera shake. Micron has posted comparison shots of camera phone images taken with and without the new anti-shake feature in the MT9T111 product flyer at http://download.micron.com/pdf/flyers/mt9t111.pdf.
“With the camera phone market’s move toward DSC quality pictures and features, our new 3-megapixel product is positioned to provide the ability to produce clean, sharp images under a wide range of conditions,” said Bob Gove, vice president of Micron’s imaging group. “Our latest product incorporating advanced image processing coupled with the anti-shake feature will push performance expectations throughout the industry.”
Micron offers several 3-megapixel image sensors in differing optical formats, but this new sensor is the first in its class with the anti-shake feature. The new 3-megapixel sensor was developed on Micron’s industry-leading 1.75-micron pixel and integrates additional camera capabilities on chip including JPEG compression and image processing that would typically require additional chips. For basic operation, the sensor only requires a power supply, lens and clock source.
“Even small movement can blur an image when taking a picture with a camera phone,” said Chris Crotty, an analyst with iSuppli. “Image sensor suppliers, like Micron, are moving beyond simply increasing image resolution and shrinking form factors for today’s camera phones, designing in some pretty innovative digital camera-like features on chip.”
Micron’s CMOS image sensor portfolio offers designers of virtually every image-capture application the flexibility, speed, resolution and feature set needed to develop high-quality products. Micron’s portfolio of CMOS image sensors are used in a variety of applications that span the mobile, consumer, medical, automotive, commercial, industrial and high-speed markets. Additional information about Micron products for mobile applications can be found at http://www.micron.com/applications/mobile/.
Availability
General customer sampling is planned for August 2007 with mass production expected in the fourth quarter of 2007.
About Micron
Micron Technology, Inc., is one of the world’s leading providers of advanced semiconductor solutions. Through its worldwide operations, Micron manufactures and markets DRAMs, NAND flash memory, CMOS image sensors, other semiconductor components, and memory modules for use in leading-edge computing, consumer, networking, and mobile products. Micron’s common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the MU symbol. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc., visit http://www.micron.com.
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