Sony debuts next-gen stacked CMOS for smartphones

by Steven Mostyn - Jan 24 2012, 09:26

Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony has this week unveiled a new line of “stacked CMOS” sensors that it believes are capable of pushing the boundaries of modern digital camera technology.

“The popularization of smartphones and other devices in recent years has been accompanied by an increasingly diverse use of camera functionality,” said Sony in an official statement.

“This has brought heightened demand for more sophisticated cameras, to ensure adaptability to a wider range of scenes, and Sony developed this stacked CMOS image sensor to meet such demand,” it added.

Looking deeper into Sony’s explanatory tech jargon, it outlines that its stacked structuring differs from current CMOS sensor capabilities thanks to the elimination of supporting substrates between the pixel layer and chip circuitry.

Sony’s new sensor relies of the separate production of these aspects, with the pixel layer containing back-lit technology, in order to craft a cleaner and more power-efficient solution that not only saves space but also cuts down on noise and provides better results in both bright and low-light conditions.

Other contributing elements packed into Sony’s hardware include, built-in signal processing, new larger-scale signal processing circuits, Sony’s RGBW Coding (Red, Blue, Green, White) and Sony’s High Dynamic Range (HDR) Movie functionality.

Set for availability between 8.0 and 13 mega pixels, samples of the stacked CMOS image sensor should begin shipping before the close of Q1.

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