At its SK Hynix TechSummit 2023 event held last month, the Korean chip designer revealed that it has been embedding an image sensor onto an AI chip allowing it to process data at the sensor level. Traditional sensors have to send image information to the device’s CPU for computational processing. “On-sensor AI” is expected to improve image quality, reduce processing time, and lower energy consumption.
The image sensor market, which contracted during the pandemic due to a decline in smartphone sales, is now riding a new growth wave with demand coming from mobile devices, mixed reality headsets and other extended reality products, self-driving vehicles, and robots. Samsung is hoping that the image sensors it embeds with AI end up being used to back the mobile cameras found on its smartphones.
