Quote:
Originally Posted by Hagar
Peter, Peter. Your reply here is to say the least short sighted. If a market exists for CCD's in the sizes manufactured by Kodak I feel sure someone somewhere will fill the void and not at the prices asked for by Fairchild etc. ......
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Sorry, that's a crock.
There are simply not that many 6" or larger wafer IC foundies..a requirement for big chip CCD's...on planet earth. There are graveyards full of superior technologies that simply didn't make it due market forces.
(BetaMax, Commodore Amiga to name a couple)
Chinese technology...is frankly not cutting edge. Maybe in time...but I'm not getting any younger.
Kodak supply sensors for a wide array of applications. Astronomy, unfortunately is not part of the "wide" bit.
The fact that we still have CCD's rather than all CMOS is something to be thankful for.
As for the Astronomy market...To put this into persepective:
A medical imaging firm (who will remain nameless) wanted some back- illuminated sensors a few years back...couldn't get them through normal production, so the purchased *the entire CCD foundry*... got all the sensors they needed.
If you were an astronomy equipment supplier....well that was just tough....get to the back of the queue
I am of the firm opinion that Astronomy is way too vertical a market to create demand for bigger-better-cheaper sensors. At best we can only hope to hang off whatever market is willing to pay the bucks for bigger/better sensors.
So guess we'll agree to dis-agree
