Sony reveals a 3-layer stacked CMOS image sensor with DRAM for smartphones. Users can capture super slo-mo at up to 1,000 frames per second in full HD – which is about 8x faster that what is out in the market right now.

While most photos fall victim to what is commonly referred to as rolling shutter effect, the new sensor is said to reduce the focal plane distortion due to faster data readout speeds. The stacked high-speed, low power consumption, high-capacity DRAM is said to be able to read one still image of 19.3 million pixels in only 1/120 second – four times faster than the currently available sensors.

The new image sensor consists of a DRAM layer added to the conventional 2-layer stacked CMOS image sensor with a layer of back-illuminated structure pixels and a chip affixed with mounted circuits for signal processing. The circuit used to convert the analog video signal from pixels to a digital signal has been doubled from a 2-tier construction to a 4-tier construction in order to improve processing ability.

With this release, Sony showcased a sample super slow motion movie using the new sensor.

Users can adjust settings to automatically detect sudden movements – so you don’t miss split second moments. Normal speed shooting data and maximum 1,000 fps high-speed shooting data stored on the DRAM are exported from the image sensor for signal processing on an external image signal processor (ISP).

The newly developed sensor also includes solutions for the various technical problems inherent in the design, for instance, reducing the noise generated between the circuits on each of the three layers.