IC Media's Camera on a Chip

How small can digital color cameras get? Well, we've already seen a camera small enough to wear on your wrist, but it should soon be possible to make them even smaller. IC Media Corporation just unveiled a single-chip digital color camera called the ICM-532A that provides CIF resolution (352 x 288 pixels) for still or full-motion video at up to 30 frames-per-second (fps). ICM says they think the chip could be used to make extremely small PC still and video cameras, cameras embedded in notebooks and LCD monitors, and things like USB finger print devices. It also supports the QVGA format (320 x 240 pixels) and the QCIF format (176 x 144 pixels), providing a higher frame rate of 37.5 fps. The ICM-532A can also use IC Media's 1/7" CIF-resolution miniature lens to build an entire PC camera implementation as small as 3 cm x 1 cm x 0.8 cm high. The single-chip camera integrates a proprietary compression engine and USB control and transceiver. The image data is compressed through USB 1.1. The ICM-532A supports Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows 2000. Driver support is provided for WDM USB driver, TWAIN, DirectShow, and VFW extension. The single-chip camera is now sampling and will be available in production quantities in July.