Patent ID: 7659925

Claim:
An image sensor circuit, comprising: a pixel array, said pixel array comprising a plurality of pixel circuits arranged in rows and columns, each pixel circuit of said plurality of pixel circuits configured to sample light intensity and to provide a corresponding analog pixel signal based on said sampled light intensity; a plurality of column analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) circuits, each column ADC circuit of said plurality of column ADC circuits connected to receive analog pixel signals provided from corresponding pixel circuits of said plurality of pixel circuits and configured to convert said received analog pixel signals into digital pixel signals; and at least two memory blocks, each memory block of said at least two memory blocks connected to receive digital pixel signals provided from corresponding column ADC circuits of said plurality of column ADC circuits, at least two of said at least two memory blocks connected to receive digital pixel signals provided from corresponding column ADC circuits that are located to a same side of said pixel array, each of said at least two memory blocks comprising: a plurality of memory cells for storing digital pixel values corresponding to said received digital pixel signals; a readout bus; one or more sense amplifiers connected to said plurality of memory cells by the readout bus for reading out said stored digital pixel values from said plurality of memory cells; and a memory controller connected to said plurality of memory cells for controlling operations of said plurality of memory cells; wherein, for each memory block of said at least two memory blocks, the plurality of memory cells for the memory block includes all memory cells that are connected to the readout bus of the memory block; and wherein each memory block of said at least two of said at least two memory blocks is connected to different column ADC circuits of said plurality of column ADC circuits than are connected to each of the other memory blocks of said at least two of said at least two memory blocks.