Tower Semiconductor begins production of Biomorphic's CMOS sensors

NOVEMBER 2--Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan; www.towersemi.com), an independent specialty wafer foundry, and Biomorphic Microsystems Corporation (Migdal Haemek, Israel; www.biomorphic.com), a supplier of imaging solutions for the cellphone and PDA markets, have announced that Tower has begun manufacturing Biomorphic 2.0- and 1.3-Mpixel CMOS image sensors. Japanese market-research firm Techno Systems Research estimates the 2006 total market for 2.0-Mpixel CMOS modules to be 65 million units, while the 1.3-Mpixel market is estimated at 190 million units.

The Bi8910T 1.3-Mpixel and Bi8921T 2.0-Mpixel SoC image sensors are produced in 0.18-μm process at Tower's Fab2, utilizing Tower's pixel IP and the company's optically optimized multilayer metallization, which achieves better optical sensitivity by reducing stack height from silicon to microlens.

Biomorphic's Bi8921T is an affordable CMOS color image sensor that combines new technologies with an advanced 2-Mpixel sensor. These include a color processing pipeline and JPEG compression in a single compact component. The Bi8921T offers UXGA resolution and is designed for cellular phone applications. The Bi8910T offers SXGA resolution and is designed for cellular phone applications. The Bi8910T provides good image quality, ease of integration, compact size, and low power consumption for overall performance.