A Revolutionary New Imaging Chip?

[Dave Mitsky]

Astroimaging is going to change drastically with this exciting development.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051207180612.htm

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0512/05121201new_chips.asp

Dave Mitsky

[Fr. Wayne]

Finally had time to read this: But Ignjatovic and Bocko have laid out the pixels to lie at the peaks of cosine waves resulting in a non-uniformly distributed array, instead of an evenly spaced one. By using this trick, the amount of computation required to compress the image is slashed by nearly five-fold. Since each pixel is positioned exactly where each cosine wave has a peak where the cosine value is "one," multiplying by one is unnecessary. With no multiplication and only a little addition, the processor uses less power Laptops are back in business!

[turbo-1]

Nice catch, Dave. Did you notice where the inventors work? Rochester, home of Eastman Kodak. I hope Kodak and others jump on this development - I want a lightweight, low-power camera to do astrophotography with, but the broad-based consumer market has to drive this, so the per-unit cost is nice and low. The article mentions higher resolution than conventional chips and a dynamic range of 1:100,000 - perfect for astrophotography.