Arri's sensors - jointly developed in the USA.

[Jay60p]

https://www.onsemi.com/company/news-media/press-announcements/en/onsemi-imaging-technology-enables-next-era-of-digital-cinematography

"PHOENIX – Sept. 14, 2022 – onsemi (Nasdaq: ON), a leader in intelligent power and sensing technologies, today announced it developed the customized high-end CMOS sensor for ARRI’s ALEXA 35 camera."

“All digital ARRI cameras—starting with the first ARRIFLEX D-20 in 2005, followed by the first ALEXA delivered in June 2010 up to the ALEXA 35 introduced this year—are based on CMOS sensors jointly developed with onsemi,” said Walter Trauninger, managing director and head of business unit Camera Systems at ARRI.

 

[sanveer]

“Developing the image sensors for the ALEXA 35 camera with ARRI shows our ability to develop high-end sensors that are low cost and high quality while maximizing performance,” said Ross Jatou, senior vice president and general manager of ISG at onsemi.

I always assumed, that if these sensors are so good, and in such high end cameras, they would cost a fortune. It almost seems like OnSemi want a much larger customer base for a much wider (semi-pro) consumer base, almost like for Hybrid ILCs or perhaps like much cheaper like Cinema Blackmagic. 

[IronFilm]

Even ARRI has to work to a budget and hit their price points!

[Alexis Fontana]

You’re paying for more than the sensor, brother. 

[jarmo]

Just because Onsemi is USA based doesn't mean the sensor is developed in the USA.

[ac6000cw]

22 hours ago, jarmo said:

Just because Onsemi is USA based doesn't mean the sensor is developed in the USA.

Given that (as far as I can see) onsemi's image sensor capability mostly comes from buying the image sensor division of Cypress Semiconductor in 2011 for $31 million (based in Belgium) and US-based Aptina in 2014 for $400 million, I think there is a reasonable chance that the Arri sensor was developed in US.

As a bit of trivia, onsemi's roots as a semiconductor manufacturer go directly back to Motorola in the 1950s, so it's effectively one of the oldest chip companies in the world. (ON Semiconductor was spun out of Motorola as in independent business in 1999).

[BTM_Pix]

On 9/17/2022 at 1:29 PM, ac6000cw said:

Given that (as far as I can see) onsemi's image sensor capability mostly comes from buying the image sensor division of Cypress Semiconductor in 2011 for $31 million (based in Belgium) and US-based Aptina in 2014 for $400 million, I think there is a reasonable chance that the Arri sensor was developed in US.

They bought Fairchild (original BM cameras) and Truesense/Kodak (Digital Bolex) too but the lineage of the Arri stuff is definitely from Cypress as both the D-20 and the Alexa had a Cypress sensor 

https://web.archive.org/web/20101230013456/http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101220005251/en/Cypress’s-Industry-Leading-CMOS-Image-Sensor-Portfolio-Designed

Its a bit of stretch for that press release to be claiming those were jointly developed with onsemi as they didn't actually buy the sensor division of Cypress (which was predominantly FillFactory who Cypress themselves had acquired previously) until a year after the Alexa had been released and six years after the D-20 was released.

In that respect, its a bit like BMW claiming they developed the original Mini Cooper because they now own the company that did.

FillFactory were based in Mechelen in Belgium and as onsemi offer CMOS hardware design jobs listed at the same site then I suspect that, as with the previous cameras, the current Arri sensors are still physically being developed in Belgium rather than the US, albeit with funding from the US parent company of course.

https://onsemi.dejobs.org/mechelen-bel/hardware-design-engineer/1025F288A9BF4AC584B993271B8E9BC2/job/

 

[Jay60p]

That is an impressive bit of research!

So it was announced back in 2010 that Cypress developed the Alexa sensor:

"December 20, 2010 09:00 AM Eastern Time 
Cypress’s Industry-Leading CMOS Image Sensor Portfolio Designed Into State-of-the-Art ARRI ALEXA Digital Movie Camera
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (Nasdaq:CY) today announced that a CMOS image sensor from its Image Sensor Business Unit has been designed into the state-of-the-art, 35 mm ALEXA digital motion picture camera from ARRI..."

From other articles, I was under the impression that the existence of third party sensor designer was not known.

Still, what I find surprising about onsemi’s announcement (and prompted my post) is that the “third party” is not an Asian based company such as Sony etc.

Neither USA (or Belgium!) would have occurred to me.

 

[ac6000cw]

4 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

They bought Fairchild (original BM cameras) and Truesense/Kodak (Digital Bolex) too but the lineage of the Arri stuff is definitely from Cypress as both the D-20 and the Alexa had a Cypress sensor 

The 'Fairchild Semiconductor' that onsemi bought in 2015 was a new version created by Nat Semi selling off their 'standard products' division in 1997, a reasonable amount of which derived from Nat Semi buying the original Fairchild Semiconductor 10 years earlier. As far as I can tell, that 1987 sale to Nat Semi (by then owner Schlumberger) didn't include the imaging division. Via a series of other companies Fairchild Imaging eventually became part of BAE Systems - see https://www.baesystems.com/en-uk/productfamily/scmos-sensors

(The myriad start-ups, mergers, takeovers, sell-offs, spin-outs and failures of semiconductor companies over even the 40+ years I've been an electronics engineer would make a pretty complicated 'family tree' I'm sure 🙂)