Just noticed something interesting in the Sony diagram:Originally I thought the GenX 320 was developed as a low pixel count sensor for compatibility with Synsense, but that was before Synsense teamed up with Inivation.
We had already been working with Prophesee for some time before that, although Synsense had been with them for longer.
Back then Prophesee had their larger sensor, and it seemed that Synsense struggled to handle its capabilities, but Akida 1 worked well.
https://inf.news/en/digital/176678d553cdb3d82a319e4838c15256.html
Sony reveals new stack CMOS sensor details, new process manufacturing
2025-08-22
View attachment 89989
Previously photosensors and control electronics were formed on a single layer. In Sony's new system, the photosensors are formed on the top layer, and the control electronics are formed on the lower layer, thus increasing the proportion of surface are available for the photosensors.
This is the Prophesee hi-fi sensor built with Sony 3D tech:
https://docs.prophesee.ai/stable/hw/sensors/imx636.html
Sony Semiconductor Solutions and Prophesee collaborated to produce SONY IMX636 (HD), a stacked event based vision sensor developed around 4.86um contrast detection pixels.
This Event-based vision sensors feature high-speed/low-latency response, wide dynamic range operation, focal-plane data compression and low power consumption.
A high level of programmability is guaranteed via a four-wire serial peripheral interface. It allows the user to define region of interest and program various functions.
The vision sensor data output is fully digital and consists of 16-wire parallel data bus with an external clock and data valid flag. This interface can easily be connected to an external parallel to LVDS serializer IC.
Features
- 1280x720 Pixel CMOS vision sensor
- 4.86μm x 4.86μm event-based pixel
- <1/2” optical format
- Monochrome
- 16-bit parallel data output
- 1G event/s (1GEPS) peak output
- Random Programmable Region of Interest (ROI)
- Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)
- High Dynamic Range (HDR) beyond 120 dB
- −40°C to +85°C Operational temperature range
- 50-70mW typical power consumption
This has about 10 times the number of pixels of GenX320.
Now that Inivation has teamed up with Synsense, we're sure to be Prophesee's best friend.
There are 4 photodiodes in a group:
1 RED;
1 Blue;
2 Green.
I recall that the human eye is most sensitive to green light, so this may be to imitate that.