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TSMC Builds a Dedicated 28nm Fab for Sony Orders
- tpmx 6y agoCIS = CMOS Image Sensor, apparently. Gotta love macronyms/nested acronyms.
- pritovido 6y agoThanks. I hate it so much when people do not explain the acronyms they use, at least once. It is like a map without a legend. It is so confusing. And I am an expert on electronics, I can guess it, most people will read that as nonsense.
- 4ad 6y agoThis article is not intended for most people.
- waheoo 6y agoI don't know why you're being downvoted, when was the last time you saw someone spell out central processing unit? Random access memory? Hard disk drive? Given the context, its not always required to reiterate acronyms.
- 4ad 6y agoPretty much. The whole blog is dedicated to imaging news and sensors.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- GuB-42 6y agoThere are 269 definitions for CIS on Acronym Finder. The first one is "Computer Information Systems" there is also "Contact Image Sensor" before we get to "CMOS Image Sensor". Even among specialists acronyms may cause confusion.
- addicted 6y agoThere’s 325 acronyms for PC, 126 for RAM, etc but you don’t expect a tech enthusiast site to spell out those for you? At least I hope not.
- dragontamer 6y agoThe domain name is "image-sensors-world.blogspot.com". I assume the intended audience is people who are into image sensors.
- C1sc0cat 6y agoIt is how ever best practice in most writing style guides
- LegitShady 6y agoIt's extremely poor communication and writing and worth a down vote.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoYes, I wouldn't think you'd need to expand "CMOS Image Sensor" on a site named "Image Sensor World".
- rasz 6y agoYou would think a site named "Image Sensor World" would know what CIS stands for and not write "...hoping to win 60% of the global Market Share of CIS Image Sensors by...".
- fomine3 6y agoMDN wrote "HTTP Protocol". https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Overview https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Overview
- rorykoehler 6y agoMy wife was talking about OHP which she used when teaching while explaining something today. I was a bit confused as we didn’t have anything called OHP when I was in school. After a bit of explaining we realised she had only ever known it as OHP. She has never stopped to think about what it was an acronym for. Turns out she was talking about the overhead projector which we had plenty of in school. Reminded me of the five monkeys experiment https://workingoutloud.com/blog/the-five-monkeys-experiment-with-a-new-lesson https://workingoutloud.com/blog/the-five-monkeys-experiment-...
- pstuart 6y agoWe live in a "5 monkeys" world.
- hinkley 6y agoFeeling more like 12 Monkeys these days.
- pstuart 6y agoSpot on.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoSo much nostalgia for that movie
- tedivm 6y agoFor those who don't know, the five monkeys experiment was completely made up by someone trying to sell books about business and has never been replicated. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-ex...
- ksec 6y agoThat is the part I dont understand. CMOS is widely known. And in the context of Image Sensor, as long as you write CMOS everyone should understand. But CIS isn't, not to mention it keep repeating itself like this sentence below "In the face of Samsung's close pursuit, Sony decided to expand its partnership with TSMC, hoping to win 60% of the global Market Share of CIS Image Sensors by 2025." What exactly is CIS Image Sensors? CMOS Image Sensor Image Sensor? Just call it CMOS Image Sensor. Not everything has to be an acronyms.
- dtech 6y ago> What exactly is CIS Image Sensors? It's what you use to take a picture of the LCD display in an ATM Machine. An ATM machine runs on AC current and you need to enter your PIN number, which it will verify over its LAN network connection.
- tpmx 6y agoA good way of dealing with this kind of thing in the future would be to include some clarifying words in the post title to HN. Like "TSMC Builds a Dedicated 28nm Fab for Sony CMOS image sensors". HN gathers all kinds of people from the technology world. We can't all be expected to know all of of the acronyms from all of the various sectors. The parent comment received 15 upvotes in a few hours, so I'm guessing most people on here don't know what "CIS" means in this context. As always, tailor your message to the likely reader.
- oasisbob 6y ago> The parent comment received 15 upvotes in a few hours, so I'm guessing most people on here don't know what "CIS" means in this context. People are more likely to have opinions on writing style than imaging chip economics and manufacturing. By posting on HN to complain about writing style, that comment took the discussion off topic and provided plenty of room for people to bikeshed.
- davrosthedalek 6y agoAFAIK, the usage of CIS became common when CMOS based sensors started replacing CCD (charge coupled device) sensors in scanners (and cameras?).
- m463 6y agoand then there's gnu hurd... It's time [to] explain the meaning of "Hurd". "Hurd" stands for "Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons". And, then, "Hird" stands for "Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth". We have here, to my knowledge, the first software to be named by a pair of mutually recursive acronyms. — Thomas (then Michael) Bushnell
- jonplackett 6y agoWhy do Sony want 28nm specifically?
- waheoo 6y agoWhy do anyone want a lower nm number?
- jonplackett 6y agoLover usually means faster and more advanced. So that’s why I’m asking.
- iagovar 6y agoCheaper and more yield/wafer maybe?
- baybal2 6y agoI think they just want to put more electronics onto the device. Rear illuminated sensors were getting more, and more "smart" over they years.
- waheoo 6y agoWhat's why you're asking? They are getting lower.. thats what the article is about? You did.. read the article right?
- Strom 6y agojonplackett was asking about 28nm because chips were being mass produced at that size in 2013 already. Nowadays people are used to reading news about 5nm as a new process size. > You did.. read the article right? Please don't be snarky like this. Asking whether someone read the article is specifically against HN guidelines. [1] -- [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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- asimpletune 6y agoI can’t wait for the same efficiencies we’ve seen in mobile CPUs to translate to other areas, like image sensors. The latest Sony a7s III is supposed to have a giant heat sink as one of its flagship features, but just imagine if they were working on TSMC 5nm tech.
- cptskippy 6y agoMy understanding is that higher density leads to greater noise. The prefer to use larger transistors that produce cleaner images.
- jhj 6y agoSensors such as CCDs are largely analog devices (up to the A-to-D converter), where thermal noise / shot noise etc. are things that matter. Cooling a CCD via active cooling or a heat sink will help lower the noise floor and improve the signal-to-noise ratio and thus picture quality.
- shrubble 6y agoSony is trying to own the market for image sensors. The Nikon D850's image sensor was designed by Nikon but Sony made it. They have a 'firewall' in place between the custom-contracted fab work they did for Nikon vs the team that designs Sony sensors, so that the Nikon IP stays only with Nikon. See https://m.dpreview.com/news/1234108119/nikon-d850-sensor-confirmed-as-sony-made https://m.dpreview.com/news/1234108119/nikon-d850-sensor-con... Only Canon at this point has stuck with their own image sensor IP and designs, as I understand it. Not sure where Ricoh/Pentax gets their sensors from, it's believed some are Samsung and some are Sony.
- newsclues 6y agoWhere does R3D source their sensors?
- phonon 6y agohttp://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2019/09/red-camera-sensor-conspiracy-theories.html http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2019/09/red-camera-s... TLDW, Forza Silicon. ( https://www.forzasilicon.com/ https://www.forzasilicon.com/) now owned by https://www.ametek.com/ https://www.ametek.com/ May not be true for all of Red's sensors. Other hardware is made by https://www.sanmina.com/ https://www.sanmina.com/
- joezydeco 6y agoSony is shipping 2 to 4 image sensors per iPhone. Who gives a rat’s ass about owning the DSLR market when you do that? And certainly this new production facility will support whatever Apple is doing with the glasses thing.
- dbuder 6y agoFWIW I have read that the Japanese electronics industry specialized into image sensors and the like because of competition for low tech silicon with Taiwan. You need different processes for things like image sensors, sometimes different semiconductor material. This is how you get competitive advantage in the image sensor market without owning a fab yourself.
- sitkack 6y agoThis is really interesting from a business relationship perspective. Sony helped TSMC build and install a new fab that TSMC will run exclusively for Sony. This is like a cloud provider bringing up a new DC just for one customer using that customer's equipment. Is TSMC just going to start rolling up every mom and pop fab? Are they the Sinclair of Silicon?