2024 Image Signal Processor Video Briefing 1

All those artful pictures we take so easily today are the result of remarkable improvements in CMOS Image Sensors, but equally to the shadowy Image Signal Processor, hidden from sight and rarely mentioned in your smartphone specs. In most mobile devices, the Image Signal Processor (nicknamed the ISP by camera aficionados) is stacked right under the image sensor making it difficult for most analysts to even see. TechInsights can do that - with our advanced labs, a close look at these devices is a breeze. TechInsights has an ISP channel dedicate to these devices and our latest Video Briefing takes a look the devices we’ve analyzed in the first half of 2024.

The ISP chip usually does several important functions; connecting directly to the Image Sensors device that converts the light to an electrical voltage it must convert the voltage to a digital signal that is then immediately processed to correct for cross-talk, adjust color balancing, reduce noise and correct for lens aberrations. All this is done by circuitry that is physically touching the imager, only a few microns away, so heat mitigation and electrical noise shielding are critical. Getting the sub-millivolt resolution required by high dynamic range sensors is a considerable design challenge.

In this briefing we look at the latest analyzed sensors including the infra-red eye tracking camera inside the Apple Vision Pro, OmniVision’s first sensor to use the Chinese foundry SMIC (the OV50H), Samsung’s first camera sensor to use Direct Bonding between the image sensor and the ISP, and the latest Prophesee Event Based Image Sensor (the GenX320ES).

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