Next RED Drive - make it out of SSD

[Andrew Ravani]

I just read on Physorg.com about a company - "supertalent" - what a humble name - releasing its 64 and 128 GB SSD drives with 100/40MB/sec sustained Read/Write - at a cost that looks really attractive for RED drive users - $179 for the 64GB model and ~$300 for the 128GB model. article here:
http://www.physorg.com/news141988555.html

Any idea if Jim, Jarred, Graham, John, et al are goind solid state in their next drive? (I know the RAM drive s coming, duh, but what about upgrading the RED RAID Disk drive contraption to a more stable SSD???) If the R/W speed is there and it consumes less power, and has fewer - if any dropouts - and it costs approximately the same and it fits in the same housing, then why not?

Thoughts? Buzz? PEACE and a bottle of hairgrease!
~Drew

PS - just got my camera email! I'm pissing myself with excitement!

[Stuart English]

I know the RAM drive s coming, duh, but what about upgrading the RED RAID Disk drive contraption to a more stable SSD???)

Well that is what a RED-RAM drive is - two SSD's in a RED-DRIVE chassis.

[Bing Bailey]

yeah but two 128GB Drives cost $600 from supertalent retail, in you take into account the costs of the raid chip , case it shouldnt be more than about $900 for that size of drive. the RED RAM is 4500 dollars which seems really high considering how fast the new ssd's are and how fast their prices are dropping

[Sean Rawls]

I wish the current Red drive was a three disc Raid 5 array. I never feel comfortable shooting to a Raid 0. Other than size an cost are there any downsides to this? With HD costs dropping so rapidly . . . throw three 1TB drives into a Raid 5 . . . . that's a lot of safe, fast storage.

[Karl Gustav H.]

yeah but two 128GB Drives cost $600 from supertalent retail, in you take into account the costs of the raid chip , case it shouldnt be more than about $900 for that size of drive. the RED RAM is 4500 dollars which seems really high considering how fast the new ssd's are and how fast their prices are dropping

Its exactly the same problem as the CF cards. The quoted speed is only burst, not sustained, and therefore about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Also, this kind of application requires a more expensive form of flash, but it does gives better usage cycles. (Its slc v mlc, but I can't remember which one is better!)

[Andrew Ravani]

Its exactly the same problem as the CF cards. The quoted speed is only burst, not sustained, and therefore about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Also, this kind of application requires a more expensive form of flash, but it does gives better usage cycles. (Its slc v mlc, but I can't remember which one is better!)

Actually the rea write is quoted as sustained. THat was what caught my eye. And it sort of reaffirms it now that Stuart says it is an SSD. I thought they were making the RAM drive out of some CF technology. Didn't realize that it as SSD all along. Should have paid more attention in RED class... or read the RED product info. Duh.

So why the price gap, RED heads? If the tech is lo $, the chip can't be $3000 - not that I have a problem with profit - anything to motivate invention - but that does seem a bit off. especially considering I could theoretically make a 256GB RED RAM drive if I had the RAID chip for about $1000 and change.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Those SuperTalent drives are not fast enough nor reliable enough, I've played with them myself for other applications (32GB units). In fact, I would say they're just crap and so are their speed claims.

RED has shown with all their accessories, and the camera itself, that they are not price-gouging customers. If it were as simple as simply dropping two off the shelf SSD units into a RED DRIVE enclosure, we would have had affordable SSD media a long time ago.

darkkelt, if you think you can do better, please by all means why don't you start building SSD storage units for the RED One? If you could produce 128GB (or even larger) SSD media for $1000 or so, you would sell them by the truckload.

For what it's worth, the upcoming $4500 128GB RED RAM is essentially the same price per GB than the 16GB flash cards. 16GB * 8 = 128GB. 8 * $550CF = $4400. So you pay $100 more to have the equivalent of 8 cards wrapped into a single unit. I'd like them to be cheaper too, but it works for me. I'll buy one for sure, maybe too but I still have to budget for the RED Primes and some other gear I need.

[Matthew Greene]

I've tried several SSD drives for a non RED related project... Samsung Spinpoint, Mtrons and a couple others I can't remember.

Out of the ones we tested, Mtron was the best performer in benchmarks. Sustained speeds seemed comparable to a 10,000rpm SATA drive (WD Raptor), seek times were significantly faster (in most cases) but for some reason the benchmarks didn't come through in real world tests, including issues where the drives would freeze for over 500 milliseconds before accesing/writing the data. The issues didn't happen in Raid 0 configurations though, just with JBOD modes.

We decided to wait for the Fusion IO which should outperform current SSD technology or the newly announced Intel SSD drives. We'll see.

[Mike Harrington]

all SSD's i've tested are crap

that said the intels should be awsome
and fusion io looks to be game changing(but expensive)

but the 4500 is a little pricey based on todays prices
others would have defended P2 in the early days for there prices...but that argument is outdated now that there is single CF cards that can outperform them for half the price(or less)

the intel ssd's should be able to handle redcode 36 and up to about 70 mb(right now) per second without raid....so maybe for epic we would need 2

[Cüneyt Kaya]

http://www.ikonoskop.com/dii/80gb-ikonskop-memory-cartridge/

[Bing Bailey]

Those SuperTalent drives are not fast enough nor reliable enough, I've played with them myself for other applications (32GB units). In fact, I would say they're just crap and so are their speed claims.

RED has shown with all their accessories, and the camera itself, that they are not price-gouging customers. If it were as simple as simply dropping two off the shelf SSD units into a RED DRIVE enclosure, we would have had affordable SSD media a long time ago.

darkkelt, if you think you can do better, please by all means why don't you start building SSD storage units for the RED One? If you could produce 128GB (or even larger) SSD media for $1000 or so, you would sell them by the truckload.

For what it's worth, the upcoming $4500 128GB RED RAM is essentially the same price per GB than the 16GB flash cards. 16GB * 8 = 128GB. 8 * $550CF = $4400. So you pay $100 more to have the equivalent of 8 cards wrapped into a single unit. I'd like them to be cheaper too, but it works for me. I'll buy one for sure, maybe too but I still have to budget for the RED Primes and some other gear I need.

Jeff,

I figured that might be true of the drives, but the intel drives that have been tested certainly get over 40MB sustained and while more expensive they aren't $4500. I'm not saying red is trying to rip anybody off. they probably put alot of resources into developing the RED RAM and there was probably nothing off the shelf available when they started. but the SSD is a moving target and they are getting faster and I believe we're close to needed sustained speeds from some off the shelf SSD's

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Something tells me that 40MB/s isn't good enough. Actually, it's not good enough by the time we consider the need for real-time performance. There's more going on than just sustaining a data rate. Even two in a RAID-0, assuming they can reach the 80MB/s in that configuration, unlikely, still fall short of what will be needed for upcoming formats for the RED One as well as EPIC.

What's more, the new Intel SSDs are hardly available in quantity now and test units are getting mixed reviews, but they seem to be very good compared to other currently available commodity SSDs and aggressively priced. The mixed reviews are a good thing, most other SSDs on the market get "two thumbs down" from most IT pros.

We'll see what RED delivers, should be very soon now. But given what has been done with the 16GB CF cards, RED is not interested in giving us something that just gets the job done. They are thinking ahead.