Will new chip revolutionize digital photography?

A company founded by well-known physicist, technologist, and inventor Carver Mead has developed a light-sensing chip that promises to radically change digital photography. Mead's company, Foveon, spent four years developing the X3 photographic sensor chip, which delivers two to four times the image resolution of other comparable digital-camera chips. Most digital cameras use charge-coupled-device technology. In the CCD process, light-sensitive integrated circuits store and display an image's data, converting each pixel into an electrical charge whose intensity corresponds to a specific color. These cameras use a mosaic filter with chip sensors that each detect just one color: red, green, or blue. Within the X3 chip, each sensor can detect red, green, and blue, depending on how far the captured light penetrates through layers of silicon-based color filters. The first X3-based cameras are scheduled to ship in the near future. National Semiconductor will build most of each chip, while Foveon will handle the final steps.