RE: [Leica] Re: Re: Leica and the digital future

[Jem Kime <jem.kime@cwcom.net>]

Having asked the question,
I'm honoured to belong to a group that can provide this sort of resouce at 
a moments notice, it's amazing to hear how these things are produced and 
work.
thanks,
Jem

- -----Original Message-----
From:	Jim Brick [SMTP:jimbrick@photoaccess.com]
Sent:	10 March 2000 23:31
To:	leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us; leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject:	[Leica] Re:  Re: Leica and the digital future

Philips makes a 6 megapixel sensor that is about the size of a 35mm frame.
We have had one here for two years. It is a beast to use. It consists of
four sensor quadrants that have to be read-out in parallel. This is because
reading out 6 million pixels serially would be very time consuming. You
then have to re-assemble the raw image via software after it is read out,
run it through a Photo Response Non-uniformity algorithm, through an
interpolator and color space converter, then into a JPEG converter to
produce a usable file.

Because of their size, and low fabrication yield, they are very very
expensive. I believe one of the new Canon or Nikon $15,000 to $25,000
cameras uses this chip.

Jim


At 09:59 AM 3/10/00 -0800, Brian Reid wrote:
>> Jim, (or others) are we ever likely to see 24x36mm chips sitting
>> in the back of our (by then) old 35mm cameras?
>
>I spent a few years working in chip fab, so let me take a stab at this.
>
>Basically the way you make a chip is as follows:
>
>1. Start with a round wafer of silicon that is as big as you can
>muster. These days you can find 12-inch wafers; I've never personally
>handled one bigger than 6 inches.
>
><snip>
>
>It costs you the same to process a wafer whether all of the chips fail
>or all of the chips work, so profitability in this business comes
>entirely from "yield", from the number of chips on a wafer that
>actually work.  Bigger chips are less likely to work, so are less
>profitable, so they are more expensive.
>
>Brian