>>3346425>>3346456When everybody says they are the designer, it simply loses all meaning.
In reality it works like this, pic related:
https://www.amd.com/en-us/solutions/semi-customA foundry like Sony has the various technologies and designs already made and put together in building blocks.
The clients like Nikon, Phase One, Fujifilm, etc then comes to Sony and put together a list of features and specs and telling Sony which building block colours they want and where, and how many of them, etc.
This is still a massive stretch to call this a "designing".
The building blocks were researched and designed by Sony to begin with.
It's very rare when a small company goes to Sony and choose to build a chip made out of the white building blocks.
The rarest example I can come up with is probably Sigma and their Foveon sensors, those are made out of the grey building blocks and the white ones. That's an example where you can say they truly own that shit, they own the IP and all the patents to the technologies in the sensor.
I wish people would stop using this term so loosely.
