Aptina

Aptina Imaging is a wholly owned division of Micron Technology, Inc., focused on the design, development, and production of digital imaging solutions for sale to module makers and OEMS in the mobile handset, digital camera, automotive, surveillance, PC camera, and medical industries. Aptina’s products include CMOS image sensors, SOCs, and wafer-level cameras. Aptina’s primary focus has been on the mobile handset segment, where its products are built into one of every three camera phones manufactured in the world.

Background
Memory chipmaker, Micron technology announced that it was creating a new brand for its imaging products. That brand is Aptina.

For a number of years, Aptina operated as Micron Imaging. According to a press release from Micron, the new Aptina identity was created to allow “our image sensor business to find the best path to the marketplace and strengthen its global customer relationships,” said Steve Appleton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Micron.

"The new subsidiary is based in San Jose, Calif., a Silicon Valley location that's a long way from Micron's Boise, Idaho, headquarters. It will employ several hundred of Micron's 19,000 employees, Micron said."

"We need the additional flexibility and identity to be able to grow the way the markets we see are growing," said Shane Thomas, director of product marketing for the imaging business.

For example, Aptina will have a dedicated sales force and get new options for finding manufacturing capacity to build its products, Thomas said. "We're able to respond more quickly to our customers' needs."

Aptina can trace its history back to when several NASA scientists, particularly Eric Fossum began working on improved imaging systems for space applications. In 1995, Fossum and other NASA scientists formed PhotoBit Technology Corporation in order to commercialize their image sensor technology. Later in 2001, Micron purchased PhotoBit in order to make use of its older semiconductor fabs.

The newly created Micron Imaging worked hard to play catch-up in the increasing crowded CMOS image sensor business. The CMOS sensor market was growing rapidly largely because of camera phones.

On January 17, 2005, Yoshiko Hara, of EETimes Asia wrote:

Though a latecomer to the CMOS image sensor market, Micron Technology Inc. expects to become the second largest supplier of sensors for the camera phone market in its current fiscal year, which started in September of last year (2004).

Micron has added two 1/6-inch vga sensors and a 1/3-inch, 2Mpixel sensor for camera phone applications to its product portfolio. Based on Micron's proprietary DigitalClarity imaging technology, these devices can capture images with a luminance under 1lux, the company said.

Micron diversified into the image sensor business in 2003 with a simple strategy: Utilize depreciated dram production lines to make competitive CMOS sensors.

"The production process for the sensors resembles the DRAM process," said Hisayuki Suzuki, senior director of marketing in Micron's imaging group. At present, Micron is shifting DRAM fabrication to a 90nm process. CMOS sensors, meanwhile, are fabricated on a 150nm process and will soon be shifted to 130nm. "We can fabricate CMOS sensors on the lines that were depreciated," Suzuki said. "So Micron has an advantage in cost competitiveness. No Japanese company can play against us in cost."

The company became one of the top five suppliers of CMOS sensors for mobile phones last year, and rapid sales growth will push it up to second place this year, Suzuki said.

By late 2006, Micron Imaging had grown to control about 38-percent of all CMOS image sensor sales in terms of total units. "Micron’s sales of sensor chips—used to capture pictures electronically in cellphones, digital cameras and other products—more than doubled during 2005, according to research firm IC Insights. The Idaho-based chip maker’s $439 million in sensor sales boosted it from the eighth-ranked vendor during 2004 into second place last year, just $11 million behind longtime industry leader OmniVision Technologies," wrote Russ Arensman in a July 2006 article.

Our image-sensor business is really zooming,” says Bob Gove, vice president of Micron’s imaging group. Indeed, the company’s sensor sales have more than tripled since 2004, from about $50 million to almost $160 million per quarter. Gove attributes the rapid growth to the improving image quality of Micron’s sensors, and to its ability to quickly ramp up production to meet surging demand from camera-equipped products such as Motorola’s popular RAZR cell phones and Apple Computer’s notebook PCs.

Micron Imaging would continue grow. But the company hit proverbial speed bump, when one of its largest customers fell on harder times. The result was a chance for Micron to retool and figure out even better ways to make its imaging business successful. The results was the relaunching of Micron Imaging as Aptina Imaging, and potentially seeking partners to speed Aptina's growth.

Aptina will continue to serve the same markets that Micron Imaging did, but hope to be more flexible and better able to serve customer needs.

Key products
Imaging SOCs
While Aptina develops several products, its main focus has been on imaging system-on-chip (SOC) solutions. These SOCs include a CMOS image sensing array and image processing logic on a single chip, providing most of the necessary components for developing a digital camera. Imaging SOCs are primarily used in mobile camera phone development, where having imaging processing on chip reduces the number of components needed for the camera system, saving space in ever-shrinking mobile camera phones.

Wafer-level Camera
On March 4, 2008, Aptina announced a new camera phone packing technology. The so-called wafer-level camera combines lens and CMOS image sensor into a single packaged module all at the semiconductor wafer-level. The key advantage to this system is that it reduces the z-height of digital camera modules for use in ultra-thin camera phones or other space-restrained digital camera applications. According to Aptina, a relatively small VGA, non-wafer-level camera module has a z-height of about 4mm, while a wafer-level camera module had a z-height of about 2.5mm, potentially allowing mobile phone makers like Motorola, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, and Samsung to name a few to make thinner mobile handsets.

A second key advantage is that wafer-level camera modules are reflow able, meaning that they can be attached to a mobile phone’s circuit board during normal mounting rather than having to be hand- soldered on as is the case with many standard modules.

Tessera, Inc., had announced a similar technology in 2007. Tessera’s OptiML™ wafer-level camera offered similar size-reducing promise, but Tessera plans to license the technology rather than produce these wafer-level camera modules themselves, as a result they have not demonstrated a working wafer-level module.

CMOS Image Sensors
Aptina is also known to produce active-pixel CMOS image sensors. The company’s offerings include many sensors in resolutions from sub-VGA to multi-megapixel.

Pixel technology
Aptina emphasizes its pixel technology. The company’s intellectual property harkens back to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs, where several scientists were working to develop improved imaging system for space exploration. Those scientists developed the active pixel sensor, which included an array of photodetectors connected to active transistor reset and readout circuitry. The company has since led the world in shrinking pixel size. Smaller pixels allow electronic engineers to create smaller and smaller digital cameras.

Shrinking pixels, maintaining image quality
Shrinking pixel size is important for bringing more resolution to consumer devices including digital cameras and mobile phones, while maintaining the small form factor required for these applications. Aptina has produced working samples of its 1.4-micron pixel technology, delivering excellent image quality unrivaled by the competition.

By reworking the fundamental design layout of its 1.4-micron pixel technology using proprietary processes and pixel scale optics that funnel light into the most sensitive areas of the pixel, Aptina was able to produce astonishing resolution and image quality that is on par or better than today’s leading-edge 1.75 micron pixels. The pixel is based on Aptina’s new 95-nanometer copper process, which both improves pixel performance and reduces the physical size of the chip, enabling smaller cameras.

Aptina will begin sampling to customers the products designed on the 1.4-micron pixel in summer 2008. Continuing its pixel performance leadership, Aptina also revealed that it is producing color images taken with a 1.2-micron pixel prototype in the lab.

Improved 1.75-micron pixel performance in new 9-megapixel sensor, March 4, 2008
On March 4, 2008, Aptina announced that it had reengineered the pixel architecture in its 1.75-micron pixel, greatly enhancing performance for producing more vibrant, truer-to-the-eye pictures. Changes made to the pixel include improved fill factor, allowing more light into the pixel and making it less sensitive to lens shading; increased quantum efficiency, improving the ability of the sensor to detect light; and better dark current, which reduces noise in the dark parts of pictures.

A new 9-megapixel (MP) image sensor from Aptina is leveraging the 1.75-micron pixel architecture, delivering quality, high-resolution image capture. The sensor has a 1/2.3-inch optical format, the ideal size for pocket digital cameras and high-end handsets. Unlike a CCD, the new sensor can capture up to 15 frames per second (fps) at full resolution for ultra-fast, burst mode picture taking and can produce high-definition video of 720p (progressive) at 30 fps.

“We have received the first production orders for our 9 MP and are effectively penetrating the Japanese name-brand camera market, which has long been the leader in producing quality digital cameras and has largely focused on CCD as the image capture technology of choice,” said Gove.

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