Amiel and Eitan Gorbonos, twin brothers and students at the faculty, developed an image enhancement chip. The project was supervised by lab engineer Goel Samuel.
The new chip developed by the students is designed to filter image noise. The students began with the general design (architecture) of the chip. The chip was manufactured according to the plan in a factory and then returned to the Technion for testing. This was the first digital chip in the VLSI lab to be fabricated using the TSMC65 process for VLSI chip production.
In recent years, Apple has been funding student projects in the VLSI lab at the faculty to provide students with the opportunity to experience the entire process as it is in the industry—from concept and design to testing the physical chip after production.
Dalia Haim, Director of the Silicon Group at Apple Israel, explains that Apple’s involvement aims to expose students to the enormous potential in the hardware field, thereby developing the next generation of chip engineers. The students participating in these projects receive guidance from Apple engineers, and after the design phase, Apple funds the chip production in the relevant factories. After manufacturing, the chips are returned to the lab, where students test them and evaluate their performance. This experience mirrors the reality of working in a development team in the high-tech industry.
In the images, the dramatic improvement in image quality can be seen—from the raw image on the left to the image after noise filtering on the right.
