PMA 2002: Carver Mead, CEO of Foveon today gave a talk in an early morning DIMA session called "The Cutting Edge of Commercial Imaging". In this talk he explained the limitations of the current mosaic type CCD sensor and went on to talk about the new X3 sensor in some detail. As part of his talk he also announced that Foveon are working with Adobe to provide X3 RAW support from within products such as Photoshop. He saved the best for last, a video of Microsoft's Bill Gates endorsing the Foveon X3 technology and announcing that Microsoft are working with Foveon to provide native support for X3 RAW images from within Windows XP.

Bill Gates Video Speech

Bill Gates video, Carver Mead on the right

The following speech was given via a prerecorded video of Bill Gates played towards the end of Carver Mead's talk on the X3 sensor technology.

".. with Windows XP you can now go beyond the desktop into digital media such as music, video and photos. This is really just the tip of the iceberg, we're on the verge of a new era computing where capturing digital memories will be more important than ever. Digital photography, like computing started with hobbyists. And, like computing is now entering the mainstream.

Foveon shares our passion for pushing the envelope and Foveon's new approach to image capture and rendering demonstrates this. Foveon's X3 sensor technology promises to take digital imaging to the next level where even higher quality images and new capabilities well beyond what's possible with today's film and digital camera technology, all at lower cost to users.

This level of digital quality will really surprise people. To further advance the experience for consumers Microsoft will innovate in Windows integrating X3 photographic and image processing. Photographs will be stored on Windows XP taking full advantage of Foveon's unique high quality image data. We will also extend Windows XP to do more with the way we handle digital photographs, making it easy to share them through e-mail or display them on other devices.

I want to congratulate Carver and Foveon on this breakthrough work and I look forward to our collaboration to bring Windows users the full potential of digital photography.

Thank You." - Bill Gates