Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

[Canon Rumors]

<p><a href="http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/cameras/Canon_rumours.html" target="_blank">Northlight Images</a> breaks down a sensor patent from Canon that shows a way to subdivide high and low sensitivity pixels.</p>
<blockquote><p>Echoing a Nikon patent from November last year (7th) Canon look at ways of subdividing pixels into high and low sensitivity sub pixels or even high/medium/low triplets</p>
<p>“Variations of this approach have been tried by numerous manufacturers, going back to Fuji nearly 10 years ago. Designing the pixels is one thing, making all the rest of the circuitry to process the information for every pixel has been slower to appear.”</p></blockquote>
<p>I suspect we’re going to see new sensor tech to improve sensitivity performance in the upcoming EOS-1D X Mark II and EOS 5D Mark IV. There is probably going to be a lot more sensor tech patents showing up over the new few months as the cameras get closer to launch.</p>

 

[ScottyP]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

A 1DR?

 

[Proscribo]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

A 1DR?

Would that indicate 1 stop of DR?

 

[clicstudio]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

I've been saying this for the past 10 years!

 

[Don Haines]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

I have been waiting for this ever since "dual pixel" came out....

 

[JMZawodny]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

They (Canon) can get a lot of performance gain by simply moving the signal chain and digitization onto the sensor chip. It would be a lot more conservative (both technically and financially) to do that than it would be to move wholesale to this newly disclosed approach. I believe there is ZERO chance of this making it into a commercial product in the next 12 months. This might be in the 1DX3 or 5D5.

 

[MrToes]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

Wish this tech comes soon! More DR and Less Shadow noise please...

 

[K-amps]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

Great News. Hopefully they can also expand the color depth of the RAW's a Tad. It will help during extreme processing. Also if they could fix the red color channel clip, it would be awesome.

 

[Diltiazem]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

Wish this tech comes soon! More DR and Less Shadow noise please...

With Dual Pixel AF Canon has shown that it is capable of splitting pixels. But we are unlikely to see this patent technology anytime soon, with increasing resolution this approach will involve processing of huge amount of data. Moreover, this patent was filed in May 2015, there is no word that it has been approved/granted.
Canon is likely to implement 'dual gain' approach to increase DR (combining high gain and low gain signals from the same un-split pixel) in their next cameras. There has been two patents on this in last several months and the last patent on this was approved by USPTO last month.

In any case, it is almost given that we will see new sensor technology from Canon with high DR and better noise performance in their next cameras.

 

[gggplaya]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

By keeping their ADC's off chip, this could actually be simpler to implement because of it. It just means more ADC circuitry and accompanying processes on the main board which is easily doable. So while the sony sensor may have a lower noise floor and therefor a greater dynamic range from on sensor ADCs. This can accomplish the same thing with a lower sensitivity pixel and 2 higher sensitivity pixels, combine them together and get the same or more dynamic range.

I think it's doable given canon knows how to split a pixel.

 

[PureClassA]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

I agree with Don. This was an obvious evolution with the dawn of Dual-Pixel sensors. Magic Lantern kinda sorta did it via firmware on non-DPAF sensors using Dual ISO with alternating lines of pixels. With each pixel split in half this gets even more fun since you aren't really cutting your resolution in half to do it (I would suspect).

The Dual Pixel we already have in the market. As it's been said, the only challenge is extracting the data fast enough. Hello DUAL Digic 7 chips (each chip reading half the pixel set). I wouldn't rule this out for a 1DX2. We usually don't see patents filed and published til long after the research has been well underway, or so i thought,

 

[Diltiazem]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

I agree with Don. This was an obvious evolution with the dawn of Dual-Pixel sensors. Magic Lantern kinda sorta did it via firmware on non-DPAF sensors using Dual ISO with alternating lines of pixels. With each pixel split in half this gets even more fun since you aren't really cutting your resolution in half to do it (I would suspect).

The Dual Pixel we already have in the market. As it's been said, the only challenge is extracting the data fast enough. Hello DUAL Digic 7 chips (each chip reading half the pixel set). I wouldn't rule this out for a 1DX2. We usually don't see patents filed and published til long after the research has been well underway, or so i thought,

Possible, I guess. But I think 'dual gain' technology is more mature as they have already implemented it in their prototype 250MP sensor. Canon will present a paper on it at ISSCC 2016.

http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.co.nz/2015/11/image-sensors-at-isscc-2016.html

 

[tpatana]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

They (Canon) can get a lot of performance gain by simply moving the signal chain and digitization onto the sensor chip. It would be a lot more conservative (both technically and financially) to do that than it would be to move wholesale to this newly disclosed approach. I believe there is ZERO chance of this making it into a commercial product in the next 12 months. This might be in the 1DX3 or 5D5.

If you move lot of stuff on the sensor chip, it'll heat up and add noise.

 

[bdunbar79]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

They (Canon) can get a lot of performance gain by simply moving the signal chain and digitization onto the sensor chip. It would be a lot more conservative (both technically and financially) to do that than it would be to move wholesale to this newly disclosed approach. I believe there is ZERO chance of this making it into a commercial product in the next 12 months. This might be in the 1DX3 or 5D5.

If you move lot of stuff on the sensor chip, it'll heat up and add noise.

Except that's the entire basis behind Sony's low read noise.

 

[tpatana]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

They (Canon) can get a lot of performance gain by simply moving the signal chain and digitization onto the sensor chip. It would be a lot more conservative (both technically and financially) to do that than it would be to move wholesale to this newly disclosed approach. I believe there is ZERO chance of this making it into a commercial product in the next 12 months. This might be in the 1DX3 or 5D5.

If you move lot of stuff on the sensor chip, it'll heat up and add noise.

Except that's the entire basis behind Sony's low read noise.

Heating up the chip?

 

[peterzuehlke]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

Didn't the original 1Ds have the AtoD on the imaging chip? I heard that they moved it off in the Ds2 because of thermal issues.

 

[bdunbar79]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

They (Canon) can get a lot of performance gain by simply moving the signal chain and digitization onto the sensor chip. It would be a lot more conservative (both technically and financially) to do that than it would be to move wholesale to this newly disclosed approach. I believe there is ZERO chance of this making it into a commercial product in the next 12 months. This might be in the 1DX3 or 5D5.

If you move lot of stuff on the sensor chip, it'll heat up and add noise.

Except that's the entire basis behind Sony's low read noise.

Heating up the chip?

I don't really care to go through EE on here, but no, by having the ADC units on-die.

 

[Don Haines]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

They (Canon) can get a lot of performance gain by simply moving the signal chain and digitization onto the sensor chip. It would be a lot more conservative (both technically and financially) to do that than it would be to move wholesale to this newly disclosed approach. I believe there is ZERO chance of this making it into a commercial product in the next 12 months. This might be in the 1DX3 or 5D5.

If you move lot of stuff on the sensor chip, it'll heat up and add noise.

If you go to finer lithography you can increase speed and decrease heat. This is a lot more than just moving a circuit from place A to place B, it will involve different designs too. Then there is the question of how well heat-sinked the sensor is to the rest of the body and how much heat is saved (or generated) overall inside the camera by the new design.... Way! to complex of an issue to discuss in a forum, particularly when we know none of the details....

 

[tpatana]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

They (Canon) can get a lot of performance gain by simply moving the signal chain and digitization onto the sensor chip. It would be a lot more conservative (both technically and financially) to do that than it would be to move wholesale to this newly disclosed approach. I believe there is ZERO chance of this making it into a commercial product in the next 12 months. This might be in the 1DX3 or 5D5.

If you move lot of stuff on the sensor chip, it'll heat up and add noise.

If you go to finer lithography you can increase speed and decrease heat. This is a lot more than just moving a circuit from place A to place B, it will involve different designs too. Then there is the question of how well heat-sinked the sensor is to the rest of the body and how much heat is saved (or generated) overall inside the camera by the new design.... Way! to complex of an issue to discuss in a forum, particularly when we know none of the details....

Yup, but my claim still stands. The more you move stuff to sensor, the more it will generate heat, and enough heat will increase the noise. Of course when they optimize the system, they move only items that improve more noise than the heat degrades.

 

[Don Haines]

Re: Patent: Subdividing High & Low Sensitivity Pixels

They (Canon) can get a lot of performance gain by simply moving the signal chain and digitization onto the sensor chip. It would be a lot more conservative (both technically and financially) to do that than it would be to move wholesale to this newly disclosed approach. I believe there is ZERO chance of this making it into a commercial product in the next 12 months. This might be in the 1DX3 or 5D5.

If you move lot of stuff on the sensor chip, it'll heat up and add noise.

If you go to finer lithography you can increase speed and decrease heat. This is a lot more than just moving a circuit from place A to place B, it will involve different designs too. Then there is the question of how well heat-sinked the sensor is to the rest of the body and how much heat is saved (or generated) overall inside the camera by the new design.... Way! to complex of an issue to discuss in a forum, particularly when we know none of the details....

Yup, but my claim still stands. The more you move stuff to sensor, the more it will generate heat, and enough heat will increase the noise. Of course when they optimize the system, they move only items that improve more noise than the heat degrades.

and my claim still stands.... insufficient data!

(I think we are saying the same thing from different perspectives)

It will be quite the balancing act to get it right..... You add more circuitry, but make it more efficient... reduce internal heat in one spot, make it worse in another.... I wonder if we will start to see heat pipes from the sensor to the frame? It could be interesting....

To my way of thinking, it is inconceivable that Canon has not been working on something to deal with the DR problems and the noise problems. I would not be surprised in the least to start seeing 16 bit RAW files out of them soon.... something is coming......