Foveon technology receives prestigious award for digital input devices

Santa Clara, CA (December 3, 2003) - Foveon Inc., a technology leader in high-quality digital photography, announces that the Foveon X3 5M CMOS Direct Image Sensor has won PC Magazine's Technical Excellence Award in the Digital Input Devices category.

The PC Magazine announcement was made during the magazine's 20th Annual Awards Ceremony held recently at COMDEX in Las Vegas. PC Magazine's lab staff and editors nominated the products, protocols, and people they thought had the most impact on the industry, after which they deliberated, winnowed, and voted. To be recognized as a Technical Excellence Award winner, PC Magazine's staff determined the selected products to be the most innovative in their category.

"Just to be a finalist in these prestigious PC Magazine awards along with other leading companies whose brands are known the world over is quite an honor," said Federico Faggin, Foveon's CEO. "Being singled out as the best in its class by the knowledgeable editors at PC Magazine is an industry acknowledgement that we are very proud of."

The editors of PC Magazine recognized the breakthrough nature of the X3 image sensor technology which directly captures three times the color and light information over traditional CCD and CMOS images sensors. According to the editors of PC Magazine, "The result is a threefold increase in apparent resolution, with more accurate definition of color boundaries, since every pixel helps define the edges of every color instead of interpolating, as with conventional CMOS and CCD devices. Although the X3 Image Sensor is targeted at professional photographers, we expect its effects to be felt in many areas of color image sensing."

Since the introduction of the first X3 image sensor in February 2002 with the Sigma SD9 digital SLR camera, Foveon has received numerous technical awards and recognition including: Popular Science's Best of What's New Award, Time Magazine's Best Inventions of the year, the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) award and the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) Award.

About Foveon X3 Direct Image Sensors
Foveon X3 image sensors are the world's only direct image sensors, which capture red, green, and blue light directly at every pixel location, and are the first image sensors that leverage silicon's inherent color separation property. When silicon is exposed to light, blue light is absorbed near the surface, green light is absorbed deeper down, and red light is absorbed even deeper within the silicon. The Foveon X3 direct image sensor has pixel sensors which are stacked at the corresponding depths within the silicon so that red, green, and blue light is captured for each pixel location thus creating the world's first three-layer image sensor.

In contrast, the traditional CCD and CMOS image sensors used in today's digital cameras capture only one color per pixel location and must mathematically interpolate the two colors not detected. This interpolation process results in false colors, reduced resolution and color artifacts.
Foveon X3 technology is highly scalable for a wide range of cameras including digital still/video cameras, PDAs, cell phones, security cameras and scientific cameras.

About Foveon
Since its establishment in 1997, Foveon has focused on the development of image capture technologies and products for digital cameras. Foveon is a privately held company. Investors include: National Semiconductor Inc., Synaptics Inc., New Enterprise Associates, and Franklin Templeton Investments.