small dimensions in some implementations the size can be e g 4 mm by 4 mm for example the chip 108 can be a 65 nm cmos chip having high speed transistors having a high transit frequency f t property the components of the coms chip are integrated at a large scale system level the direct phase output from the chip 108 has a high sensitivity and the chip 108 operates within a large dynamic range other than the imaging region 102 the row level phase extraction circuit 104 or u201c row level phase readout u201d and the tdc 106 shown in fig1 a the chip 108 includes other components discussed below that enable the chip 108 to provide direct phase readout based on signals received at the imaging region 102 the chip 108 does not require any off chip signal converters to further process signals to obtain digital phase outputs although a circuit design for each component is described below other circuit designs can be implemented to provide the functions of the chip 108 in some implementations the imaging region 102 can include arrays of photodetectors e g photodiodes phototransistors or other types of photodetectors built within the chip 108 although the figures show a 32 u00d7 32 photodiode array other array configurations can be used each photodiode is identifiable by an address within the array and expressed as a vector x y each photodiode is connected to the xth column decoder of column decoders 112 and the yth row decoder.