Samsung India enggs design world’s first 108MP camera

Engineers in Samsung’s semiconductor research centre in Bengaluru led the development of the world’s first 108MP camera that was launched two years ago. The product, which has a resolution equivalent to that of a high-end DSLR camera, has not only gone into Samsung phones, but also in non-Samsung ones like Realme.

“We did the entire product planning, details of the product, kind of image quality, performance in terms of frame rate, dark light performance, and power dissipation,” says Balajee Sowrirajan, MD of Samsung Semiconductor India Research (SSIR). Cameras, he says, are one of the biggest power guzzlers on a phone. “Our team designed the specifications, did the hardware design, and then sent it to South Korea for manufacturing. It was then sent back to us to develop the software that runs on the product. It was an end-to-end effort,” he says.

The 108MP mobile image sensor, Isocell HMX, was a leap from the 64MP camera image sensor. It has over 100 million 0.8um-sized pixels with higher resolution for better picture quality. If you make a video with a 108MP image sensor, it will give greater clarity when you zoom in. It will keep your cropped pictures sharper too.

The sensor is larger in size (1/1.33”), and power is required at the pixel level. So, a key challenge was to ensure that power is uniformly distributed to get good sensor pixel characteristics and ensure uniform noise distribution. Time to market was also a huge challenge. The project was initiated in 2018 and needed to be completed by the end of 2019.

SSIR is the largest Samsung R&D centre outside of South Korea, with over 2,700 employees. Sowrirajan oversees the India operations of the memory, system LSI, and foundry business units.

The unit’s journey began in India with a focus on software development for smart TVs and digital television. Later, the work expanded to include product design and development, including circuit design, IP design, SoC design, mobile SoC development, associated software components, and storage solution development.

SSIR is also responsible for the development of the Exynos chipset which is targeted at mid-tier and low-tier smartphones. Exynos is a series of ARM-based system-on-chips that define user experiences like better streaming, better battery life, and better image quality. SSIR teams have worked on the latest Exynos 2100, which is built on advanced 5nm EUV (extreme ultraviolet) process technology that allows up to 20% lower power consumption or 10% higher overall performance than the 7nm predecessor. It is enabled with 5G capability.

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