Panasonic to dismantle digital camera business

The CMOS imager does a huge amount of work and gets very hot, the IBIS makes it much harder to cool too, so this is a big issue that they need to handle. Typical CMOS imagers have light gathering sites, amplifiers for each pixel (hopefully), A-D convertors (again hopefully each pixel), memory for each pixel (hopefully), and of course a data bus controller to get the data out of the imager. Lots of stuff generating heat in that single chip. So it's not just the processor that gets hot and needs to be cooled.
 
DLD said:
So, GH5 is still using a 28 nM technology. That's a bit behind the times. Sony, Samsung and Qualcomm have long moved to 14-16 nM, with Qualcomm already having announced a 10 nM chip that will be manufactured for them by Samsung.
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Samuel H said:
What does that "28 nm technology" quote refer to? Different chips use different processes, and they remain state-of-the-art. On the iphone 7, you have a 20/16 nm processor, 28 nm transceiver, 15 nm flash memory... and 90 nm image sensor with 28 nm ISP.
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I know smaller is better/less power/less heat, but are you guys engineers??? Or is my chip knowledge just... nano-existent? :undecided
 
Who cares what type of chip technology Panasonic is using. They have some of the best processing in the industry with no over heating. If the chip size was an issue they might update but so far they haven't needed to. I agree with groveChuck, since when did the people on here become chip engineers?

Every single post in this thread is a massive load of speculation and people guessing about stuff they likely know nothing about. Lets leave the camera business to Panasonic and focus on creating stuff with said cameras instead of always trying to guess what a business decision means to a theoretical camera five years down the road. Talk about way too much free time.
 
^ 100% agree. In particular: if the chip does 4k 60 fps 10-bit inernally with no overheating, saying "oh, but it's old tech because it's 28nm and other people are using 14nm" just does't make sense. What are those other people doing with their 14nm chips? Where are all those other <$2k cameras shooting internal 10-bit?
My point was that 28nm is not bad at all nowadays, but in any case this broader point just can't be contested.

About all the "engineers" around here: there are some, but I'm certainly not one of them. Just tech-minded, and with enough interest in it to have spent the time to learn some of this stuff. I did spend a couple of years of my spare time trying to program an FPGA to create my own camera. I quit that, but nowadays my job includes working with machine learning and neural networks, so, engineer-like stuff.
 
JeffD7K said:
OUT OF Canada comes this information posted on MU43:

"In response to the Nikkei story, Panasonic has put out the following statement:

'The recent article featured on the Nikkei regarding Panasonic’s Imaging business was not announced by Panasonic and refers to a change in our internal organizational structure.

Integrating all consumer electronics divisions, our consumer Digital Imaging business will move under Panasonic Appliances Company and is not being dismantled.

The aim of this change is to further deepen our relationships with customers, strengthen our product capabilities, and continue to firmly develop and promote our business.' "
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That sounds great, but just wondering...the M43 rumors site states "Panasonic has put out the following statement", then at the bottom it's citing their source as DPReview, which is that exact text as an update to a previous article on DPR.

But when searching Google, DPReview and M43 Rumors (a copy/paste of from DPR) are the only two main sites being linked by forums, with DPR as the only source. Are the readers supposed to conclude that DPReview's "Panasonic statement" is official because of the reputation of the website?

I ask, because there's nothing on any Panasonic sites that state this...and the DPR update doesn't say something like "We spoke with 'so-and-so' from Panasonic..." The Nikkei story was the only source and here we have a more positive update, yet DPR is also the only source.
 
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groveChuck said:
I know smaller is better/less power/less heat, but are you guys engineers??? Or is my chip knowledge just... nano-existent? :undecided
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This came out a day ago wrt the upcoming iPhone design.

... The chip inside the iPhone 7 is the Apple A10 Fusion, which includes two high-power cores and two lower-power cores. The design of the A11 chip is unknown but the report says it is fabricated using a 10 nanometer process ....

In general, lower nanometers means better efficiency and better performance as there is simply less space between transistors, which enables the chip to reach higher clock speeds.

The A10 chip is fabricated at 16nm so a reduction to 10nm for the A11 already signposts that a major upgrade is in the wings. Bear in mind that the A10’s speed in the iPhone 7 already outstrips the rest of the smartphone industry in single-core performance. As well as density, Apple chip designers will have likely redesigned the components and circuitry to optimize performance and power efficiency further.
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https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/27/tsmc...hip-in-april-ahead-of-iphone-8-10-nm-process/

General computing -

Fab 42, which Intel has been planning for several years, will make “the most advanced seven-nanometer semiconductor chips on the planet,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has said. The seven-nanometer process means the smallest spacing between repeated features on a chip along one direction is seven nanometers, which means more transistors can fit onto each wafer. Right now the most advanced chips on the market are made using a 14-nanometer process. Seven-nanometer processes will provide an estimated 35% speed improvement, use 65% less power and provide more density, according to analysts...
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http://www.rcrwireless.com/20170306/chips/embedded-processor-update-tag4
 
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And, while this may be better suited toward a recent hardware thread -- this is slightly different insofar as it relates to the memory chips but, I believe, the manufacturing process is fairly similar.

Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday that it will announce technical details of more advanced flash memory chips in May that would significantly improve data storage capacity in digital products.

Samsung started mass production of NAND flash memory chips with a circuitry width of 10 nanometers last October. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.

In a statement, Samsung said it will unveil a technology roadmap and technical details of flash memory chips with a circuitry width of 8 nanometers and 6 nanometers at the company's annual forum in May.

Finer circuitry technology reduces the size of a chip and power consumption...
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http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2017/03/16/0200000000AEN20170316004200320.html

And, a general article from 2014 on the nanometer race in mobile and tablet world.

http://www.androidauthority.com/past-and-future-soc-nm-573584/

And, the last but not least, there's a piece in a science mag that a researcher has come out with a 1 nM process that had to shun copper because copper can't go below 5 nM. They used molybdenum coated with graphene instead.
 
Another press release people may find interesting:
http://news.panasonic.com/global/press/data/2017/03/en170331-5/en170331-5.html

Panasonic Corporation today announced that Panasonic Corporation of North America has established a new sales division, Panasonic Media Entertainment Company, that will specialize in serving the needs of the sports and entertainment industries. Officially launching on April 1, the company will be based in Newark, New Jersey within the headquarters of Panasonic's operations in North America; it will also maintain offices in Denver, Colorado, Los Angeles, California, Orlando, Florida and Coppell, part of the greater Dallas area, Texas.
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Cool. I wonder what will be of interest geographically for these new locations? I would be close to the Dallas location, what do you think, corporate only or maybe some interaction possibilities with gear/events...?
 
Bassman2003 said:
Cool. I wonder what will be of interest geographically for these new locations? I would be close to the Dallas location, what do you think, corporate only or maybe some interaction possibilities with gear/events...?
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That was in that PDF link. Basically, it says that, should something break down, Mitch Gross will fly across the country and personally fix it for you.
 
DLD said:
It's already Monday in Japan. The time difference between New York and Osaka is 28 hours.
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It was released in Japan and datelined Saturday which is not normal. If you want it released on Monday in the US you dateline it Monday USA. Or release it on Monday in Japan.
Especially if the Saturday is April 1st.
 
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DLD said:
It's already Monday in Japan. The time difference between New York and Osaka is 28 hours.
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Trying to figure out how a 28 hour difference would happen. (Unless someplace is using a non-standard time zone not recognized anywhere else...)
 
nutmegger said:
Correction. Osaka is +13 hours ahead of New York.
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jagraphics said:
It was released in Japan and datelined Saturday which is not normal. If you want it released on Monday in the US you dateline it Monday USA. Or release it on Monday in Japan. Especially if the Saturday is April 1st.
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KMR said:
Trying to figure out how a 28 hour difference would happen. (Unless someplace is using a non-standard time zone not recognized anywhere else...)
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i-dont-always-explain-my-jokes-but-when-i-do-i-use-memes.jpg
 
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