Does Sony have semiconductor division?

[sangar]

Hi All,

In one of the conversation, my colleague said that SONY is the end-product company and it does not have any semiconductor division for them...Instantly, I googled the above and I got Sony-semicon...As far as I know, this Sony-semicon is only focusing on Digital image sensor as I don't see others except this...


Well,
Q1:Does sony owns this Sony-semicon ?
Q2: Do they focus on others but Digital image sensor?

Thanks,
Muthu

[@rt]

Sony developed heaps of silicon for their own stuff, and others.
How about their game consoles? A lot of Sony video encoders and such ended up in all sorts of camcorders, and (now retro) computers.

[@rt]

CD player and CD drive chipsets are another one. Just start typing Sony CXD into Google and let autocomplete do the rest.

[coppice]

30 years ago Sony had a semiconductor division producing quite a range of both consumer products and high performance products. They built a lot of what they needed for their own consumer and professional end equipment, and they sold widely on the open market. For example, in the early 90s they were the place to go to for high performance DACs. They needed them for the workstation equipment they produced, available products were not good enough, so they made their own, and offered them to the open market.

Now, their focus seems much narrower.

[bitwelder]

To be on-topic with the owner of this forum, just watch Dave's teardown of any Sony device he had in his hands, and you'll see plenty of Sony (quite specialized) ICs.

[raptor1956]

I high percentage of the imaging chips in DSLR's and other cameras are made by Sony.  The picture gets a bit more complicated when you realize that a lot of chip companies are not actually chip companies but IP creators that rely on foundries to actually make there chips.  A decade ago AMD was a big chip maker, today they don't make any chips at all and instead rely on companies like Global Foundries to FAB there parts.  I'm not sure where Sony is on that spectrum.


Brian

[Nauris]

I'm not sure where Sony is on that spectrum.

Their web pages say Sony is very much in the chip making end with 6 fabs located in Japan, latest ones opened in 2014 and 2016.
I found video from Kumamoto fab after the earthquake in 2016:

[schmitt trigger]

Back in the late 80s, when IR remote controls were not completely integrated into a single device, we used a specialized Sony IC to amplify the photodiode signal.

They of course, used it on their TVs and VCRs, but was also available to other OEMs.

[Wan Huang Luo]

This article gives a good description of Sony's semiconductor manufacturing operations;

https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2017/09/05/sony-kumamoto-sensor-factory-tour-a-rare-glimpse

The Kumamoto factory is almost completely automated, with humans rarely even being in proximity to the wafers. The factory workers' duties seemed to be almost entirely limited to servicing, tweaking and repairing the production equipment itself. Other than that, most operations in the factory run 24/7 without human intervention.

[rx8pilot]

In the ultra-specialized world of broadcast, Sony has developed a myriad of specialized silicon solutions. They are, however using more and FPGA for flexibility on products that are aimed at moving targets.

Short and misplld from my mobile......

[coppice]

Sony has two IC divisions, Sony Semicon and Sony LSI.
Sony Semicon offers CMOS/CCD sensors, OLEDs, LCDs (recently spun off as JDI), MEMS devices, laser diodes and MEMS foundry services.
Sony LSI offers image sensor interface ICs, audio/video ASICs and CMOS foundry services.

Both are very secretive, as I've never seen any of their products (rest of image sensors) used outside Sony end products.

"Secretive" and "foundry services" don't go together. If you haven't seen Sony silicon in non-Sony products you probably haven't looked very much.

[Richard Crowley]

Sony has two IC divisions, Sony Semicon and Sony LSI.
Sony Semicon offers CMOS/CCD sensors, OLEDs, LCDs (recently spun off as JDI), MEMS devices, laser diodes and MEMS foundry services.
Sony LSI offers image sensor interface ICs, audio/video ASICs and CMOS foundry services.

Both are very secretive, as I've never seen any of their products (rest of image sensors) used outside Sony end products.

Sony image sensors (and complete sub-assembly "block-cameras") are widely used (and advertised) in consumer and broadcast gear.

Sony was the first (or one of the first?) Japanese companies to license the transistor from Bell Labs back in the early 1950s.  They developed their own manufacturing process from scratch. There was a great documentary on YouTube about this.  I will see if I can find it again.

[Gyro]

If you haven't seen Sony silicon in non-Sony products you probably haven't looked very much.

Care to name a few? Of course, rest of Sony designed, non-Sony branded ones such as those rebranded optical drives.
Also, one known Sony silicon in the wild is their IoT chip (M4F+Codec+GNSS).

I've really not seen other examples.

I designed Sony silicon into OEM consumer digital set-top-boxes in the late '90s/ early 2000s. Their customer design support relationship was excellent, they were always keen to share advanced info and get feedback to improve future product integration.

Of course that was before they downsized their UK operations, but there again, so did we!

[coppice]

If you haven't seen Sony silicon in non-Sony products you probably haven't looked very much.

Care to name a few? Of course, rest of Sony designed, non-Sony branded ones such as those rebranded optical drives.
Also, one known Sony silicon in the wild is their IoT chip (M4F+Codec+GNSS).

I've really not seen other examples.

Sony chipsets for non-Sony CD and other disk players.
Sony chipsets for non-Sony analogue TVs. They never seemed to get their act together with digital TV.
Sony SRAMs seemed to be all over the place in the 90s.
Sony video ADCs and DACs seemed to be everywhere in the 90s. The DACs were used a lot in 90s era digital radio, as their glitch energy was lower than DACs made by people like ADI specifically for the purpose.
Sony MEMs devices seem to be widely used, although I'm not clear if they have a big market share like they do with image sensors.

Most of the Sony silicon I know about is not particularly new, but there is an awful lot of it out there in the world in non-Sony products. None of the Japanese semiconductor makers have done very well in the last 10 to 15 years. Just look at the sad tale of Renesas.

[LaserSteve]

Sony re-arranged their web pages in the last few years to consumer friendly, phone friendly marketing fluff that forces you to contact their sales people to get anywhere near hardware data. That is is why your not finding data on their operations. I went looking for block camera data a month ago and struggled till I found Sony Europe's web pages seem to be  independent of Sony Global Marketing.

Steve

[Richard Crowley]

Sony re-arranged their web pages in the last few years to consumer friendly, phone friendly marketing fluff that forces you to contact their sales people to get anywhere near hardware data. That is is why your not finding data on their operations. I went looking for block camera data a month ago and struggled till I found Sony Europe's web pages seem to be  independent of Sony Global Marketing.

Indeed, their US websites are useless fluff almost completely devoid of useful technical information.
I have also found that for the real technical info you must go to the UK, EU, or even South American websites.
I was a rabid Sony fan-boy for decades since I was in high school.  But that is wearing pretty thin in recent times.

[coppice]

None of the Japanese semiconductor makers have done very well in the last 10 to 15 years. Just look at the sad tale of Renesas.

They're still world's No. 1 MCU seller due to their huge existence in automotive. And they just took Intersil.

I think NXP overtook Renesas when they merged with Freescale, but Renesas are certainly big in MCUs. However, they aren't that big compared to the combined market shares of NEC, Hitachi and Mitsubishi before they merged.

Without their strong automotive presence Renesas would probably have died. People like Toyota had to take part in the bailouts, because they couldn't afford to see Renesas disappear. The last time I talked to automotive people, which might be about 4 years ago, their highest priority was to get parallel designs free of Renesas parts ready.