Since the early 1970s, Fairchild Imaging has been a pioneer in electronic imaging utilizing our proven CCD based technology. In our continuous quest to push the state-of-the-art in high-performance optical detectors, Fairchild Imaging has acquired the rights to Agilent Technologies' ultra-low-noise CMOS sensors for industrial, medical, aerospace and scientific imaging markets.

Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) detectors provide advantages over CCD image sensors particularly in speed and low power consumption. Until recently, however, CMOS detectors have not been capable of delivering the low noise performance of their CCD counterparts. Even active pixel sensors with amplifiers intregrally embdedded in each pixel tend to have read noise that is an order of magnitude higher than a CCD.

Fairchild Imaging's new CMOS sensors break through this read noise barrier and finally offer a CMOS detector that challenges the sensitivity of high performance CCDs. At the heart of these next generation detectors is Active Reset™ technology that pushes the noise floor of CMOS sensors down by more than an order of magnitude and delivers true low-light sensitivity. Active Reset enables simultaneous high-speed low-noise optical detectors in such applications as machine vision, industrial inspection and spectroscopy. Our first implementation, the Owl 2k line scan camera, is already breaking new ground in industrial markets such as glass inspection and web inspection and is the vanguard of our thrust into the high-performance CMOS arena.