A New Breed of Cameras
Picture this: A new Breed of Cameras
Who will become the Intel of photography?
February 2, 2005
By:
Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
One of the biggest endorsements for Pixim, a start-up that designs chips for digital cameras, came from a bank robber.
His mistake occurred as he left the building of the major British bank
he had just held up and took off his mask. The reflected glare from the
door ordinarily would have washed out the scene - but security cameras
using Pixim's sensors, designed to work in poor lighting conditions,
captured a facial image that led to an arrest.
Since then, cameras containing the chip technology are mandatory for
contractors bidding for retrofit work at that bank's branches, said Lee
Hirsch, Pixim's vice president of marketing.
Digital photography could become one of the next big opportunities for
the chip industry, at least according to companies that want to bring
PC-style economics to the camera industry. Their goal: Become the
Intel, or at least the Advanced Micro Devices, of photography.
"We're fighting the processor wars all over again," said Gary Baum,
senior vice president of NuCore Technology, which makes the
CleanCapture image processors for video and still cameras from JVC,
Kyocera and others. "Remember the mid-'80s? PCs cost $5,000, and
everybody made their own chipsets. Then the price wars hit."
The push into photography derives in part from its booming growth.
Shipments of digital still cameras grew from 46.4 million in 2003 to 62
million in 2004 - a 33.6 percent increase, according to industry
researcher iSuppli. And phone makers will include multi-megapixel
cameras and video features in the bulk of their models over the next
two years.
An even more ambitious type of product is planned for the end of this
year and next: a new breed of hybrid camera that can capture
full-motion video and high-resolution photos at the same time, without
the user having to toggle back and forth between different function
modes.
Complicated market forces, however, are already presenting as many
obstacles as opportunities. Declining prices mean that camera makers
need to cut down the cost of designing cameras.
Unfortunately, chip design costs are escalating, putting manufacturers
in a bind--particularly Japanese ones, which often prefer their own
silicon. Sony, for instance, uses only internally made image processors
and sensors in its cameras, a representative said in an e-mail.
Despite this marked preference for in-house processors among some large
camera makers, the market for third-party chips is growing. Although
only about 20 percent of digital cameras in 2004 contained image
processors from third-party manufacturers, that number is up from 10
percent the year before, said Kanika Ferrell, U.S. marketing manager at
Texas Instruments' digital-camera unit.
Kodak and Hewlett-Packard use TI chips extensively in their cameras,
she said, while Olympus and Panasonic have picked up the company's
chips for select models. Texas Instruments is also trying to persuade
cell phone makers that use TI chips in handsets to pick up camera chips
as well. Canesta and Zoran are mining this field, too.
In an effort to avoid commoditization in this crowded market, camera
makers are also adding layers of software to differentiate their
products from the pack, even if they use the same chip as their
competitors do. Hewlett-Packard's 2004 cameras, for example, included
red-eye reduction and technology that compensates for harsh changes in
lighting, said David Ryan, the company's director of marketing for
cameras worldwide.
"The HP algorithms are exclusive to HP," he said. "There is plenty of room for innovation."
A peek behind the lens
A digital camera essentially consists of four basic parts: a lens; an
image sensor that captures light through its pixels; an
analog-to-digital (A-to-D) converter; and an image processor that
filters and polishes the converted data into a coherent, crisp image
that can be stored, displayed or printed.
Each component faces its own limitations. Shrinking the size of the
lens to reduce overall camera size lessens the amount of light hitting
the sensor, thereby hampering image quality.
To compensate, manufacturers increase the number of pixels on the
sensor. But squeezing more pixels into a sensor reduces pixel size,
which, in turn, can introduce artifacts that further degrade accuracy
and quality. Likewise, digital converters and image processors that
can't handle large amounts of data introduce noise and granularity into
photos.
Blue overtones, red fringing, washed-out detail, jagged edges in smooth
surfaces, shadows - all these are common problems caused by hiccups in
the processing chain of digital photos or video.
Pixim's Digital Pixel System, which grew out of research by Stanford
University professor Abbas El Gamal, attempts to improve the picture by
combining the image sensor with a massive array of analog-to-digital
converters. With this somewhat-novel architecture, signal degradation
and lighting problems are reduced because pixels are independently
monitored and controlled.
"There is an A-to-D converter under each pixel," Hirsch said. "The dark ones get longer exposure, and the light ones get less."
This technology invariably requires larger cameras, so Pixim isn't
trying to fit its sizable chip into smaller products such as cell
phones. Instead, it sells its chips to companies like General Electric
and EverFocus Electronics that are offering security cameras for $300
to $1,500.
Focusing on the process Other companies, such as NuCore and Texas
Instruments, are concentrating mostly on the image processor itself.
From an economic perspective, buying chips has definite advantages over
manufacturing them. Five years ago, a "mask" - which is a sort of
circuit blueprint - might cost $100,000 to make, and an entire chip
might cost $10 million to develop. Now a mask alone can cost more than
$1 million, and the cost of the whole chip could exceed $30 million.
The rising costs come because camera makers are putting more, faster
transistors into a smaller space, a la Moore's Law.
Products also have a shorter shelf life, so new chips must be cranked
out every 12 months to 18 months. To top it off, cameras are expected
to come with ever-broader sets of features, including wireless
connectivity, the capability to connect to different memory cards,
audio recording and "preview engines," which provide a view of what a
picture might look like before it's taken.
To this end, Texas Instruments has created a line of chips that include
such features in transistor blocks but enables manufacturers to tailor
them to specific product lines.
"We create the image pipeline," Ferrell said. "What they do with it is up to them."
NuCore, which sells an analog-to-digital converter as well, is trying
to distinguish itself by adding high-visibility features. The company's
current CleanCapture chips, for instance, include the company's
InfiniteBurst technology, which lets cameras take up to 3.5 pictures a
second.
"It will keep taking pictures until the memory card is filled up," Baum said. "And there is an autofocus between each shot."
In another feature that takes a significant step toward true hybrid
lines, Panasonic's JVC brand recently came out with a video camera that
can automatically take a 2-megapixel photo in the middle of a video
stream. The camera effectively drops about nine frames of video as it
takes the still shot. (JVC sells a NuCore chip under its Megabrid
brand.) Similar models from others are coming.
Later in the year, NuCore will debut software that lets a camera run a
slide show with special effects and a soundtrack directly onto a TV
set. High-definition capture at 30 frames per second is on the drawing
board for the company's fourth-generation product, which is nearing the
end of its design phase.
So far, progress is proceeding in a bottom-up fashion. NuCore has
landed deals with Contax, Kyocera and JVC, among others, and has
shipped a million chips since production began in 2001. Texas
Instruments maintains comfortable relationships with Kodak and HP, the
top two U.S. manufacturers, and sells its chips for use in cameras from
Olympus and Samsung.
The watershed moment will occur when Canon, Sony or Sanyo, which make a
number of cameras for other brand manufacturers, begin to use
third-party chips en masse. That might be a tough sell for Canon, said
Shyam Nagrani of iSuppli, because much of its marketing is based on its
Digic image processor. But sources say Canon has already begun to sell
at least one high-end camera with a third-party image processor.
The use of third-party chips and other parts may become increasingly
necessary as competition intensifies. Although unit shipments of
digital cameras will rise to 74 million this year - a 19 percent
increase - average selling prices of cameras will drop from $240 to
$205, leaving worldwide revenue from still digital cameras roughly flat
at an estimated $15 billion.
Prices for video cameras are dropping as well, but it's still a hometown crowd.
"In camcorders, Sony is No. 1, and Panasonic is No. 2. And guess what, they both make their own imagers," said Pixim's Hirsch.
Contact:
John Monti
Pixim, Inc.
(650) 605-1107
monti@pixim.com
