[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] Future Company (CEO Kim Jungoo) announced on the 7th that it is accelerating the development of a companion chip for the Samsung LSI VGA ToF sensor to be applied to the ToF (Time of Flight) 3D camera Cube Eye.
At the world's largest electronics exhibition 'CES2020' last January, Future Company showcased a high-resolution ToF 3D camera with True VGA level.
Until now, ToF cameras had limitations in processing depth data with high-resolution computation. Unlike 2D, the amount of depth information generated by ToF 3D cameras is large, making it burdensome to process with existing application processors (AP).
To solve this problem, Future Company independently developed an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), a type of programmable non-memory semiconductor, to handle ToF 3D depth computation. However, this also had limitations in reducing size and could not avoid product heat generation.
Accordingly, Future Company started developing a companion chip for the Samsung LSI VGA ToF sensor last year. This is described as a new attempt beyond conventional ideas.
Once the dedicated chip development is completed, it will overcome the drawbacks of the existing FPGA and enable high-speed processing of complex high-resolution 3D data at True VGA level. Future Company aims to complete and launch the dedicated chip within the first half of this year.
The ToF 3D camera equipped with this companion chip does not require separate computing resources for processing, which is expected to be an opportunity to overcome the limitations of resolution, heat generation, and size that have been considered disadvantages of 3D cameras.
A company official said, “Because the computation amount of 3D cameras is very large, there have been restrictions on the use of ToF 3D cameras in various fields including mobile. When the newly developed dedicated chip is added to Future Company’s 3D camera Cube Eye, the precision of 3D cameras will be further improved, enabling much enhanced AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) implementations not only in mobile but also in home appliances, robots, and facial recognition markets.”
Meanwhile, Future Company plans to expand its business into the semiconductor field along with its existing ToF camera business through the development of the True VGA level companion chip.
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