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Article: The Impact of Imaging Systems on a Chip: Which apps can be addressed first?
- Article from:
- Advanced Imaging
- Article date:
- March 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Cygnus Business Media. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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You, me, and everyone else who's looked at CMOS imagers soon comes to ask the same basic question: "Since the imager's pixels and their associated image-capture circuitry (the photo plane) is produced on the same fab line, why aren't they all integrated into a single chip? After all, how hard can it be to have a system on a chip (SOC) with light as its input instead of electrical signals?"
In terms of physically lumping everything together on the same piece of silicon, it's no problem at all. But delivering image quality--that's a different kettle of free electrons. The issue stems from the need to have a low noise floor and to deliver good sensitivity, but the ...