Ahead of this year’s Image Sensors Americas 2017, Smithers talked with Sony Electronics Product Marketing Director, Abhay Rai, to get insights into his presentation, along with the importance of this event for the image sensor market, current challenges with CMOS image sensors, and what he sees on the horizon for the image industry the coming years.
What does Sony hope to achieve and what can we see happening over the next few years in the image sensors market?
With our state of the art CMOS fabrication, best in class pixel performance, world leading stacked sensing, de-facto quality standard and our commitment to automotive sensing, we are uniquely positioned to help automotive industry make the autonomous driving a reality by providing the best image sensors that can see under all lighting conditions. We are at the forefront of introducing industry leading CMOS image sensor products across all market segments. Recently, we introduced industry first 2MP, 1/2.7” automotive CMOS image sensor that can simultaneously address LED flicker and HDR, provide best low light sensitivity per unit pixel area and support ASIL-C. Sony is world leader in CMOS image sensors with our #1 market share . Sony supplies 49% (TSR report 2016) of all CMOS sensors supplied worldwide. With our leading technology and knowledge of CMOS image sensor, it is right time for automotive market to leverage the best sensor performance for an optimized system solution.
What are some current challenges you are facing?
According to WHO, automotive accidents cause 2-3% of GDP in developed countries. CMOS image sensors, eyes of the modern cars, are most optimum way to address the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) architecture. Historically CMOS image sensors in cars have been used in back up camera applications that are not performance critical. In performance critical ADAS applications, sensor needs to run for long time, under rugged environmental and architecture conditions. In a nutshell, CMOS image sensors in performance critical automotive applications need to achieve similar performance as human eyes to provide safe riding experience. Sensor performance and trustworthiness will be critical for the success of self-driving market to evolve.
What do you think this event will do for the image sensor market?
IS Americas-with its reach, popularity and relevance- can assemble very diverse, and sharp minds of heterogeneous technologies and application areas addressing the toughest problems with their own unique approach using the common basic technology of image sensing. This platform of knowledge sharing, can advance the technology at much faster rate: well beyond the linear scaling. Sharing the information openly can help solve world’s toughest problems in more efficient way.
What are you looking forward to the most?
IS Americas assembles whos who of the imaging industry and it is an opportunity to understand what problems industry leaders are focusing on. I am looking forward to understand how the technology leaders in different market are using imaging to solve their problems and how can I apply similar techniques in my field of interest.
Why should people attend this event?
Great way to network, understand the market direction and relevant research, increasing one’s own knowledge base. It is a great opportunity to meet the sharpest minds of the industry in shortest amount of time under one roof.