Cooling

[Brook Willard]

What is the planned cooling system on the Epic bodies? I don't see any vents... is it all passive? Or peltier-based? Hard to get a grasp on it from the renders.

[Jannard]

What is the planned cooling system on the Epic bodies? I don't see any vents... is it all passive? Or peltier-based? Hard to get a grasp on it from the renders.

Trust me... we have this figured out. :-)

Jim

[Brook Willard]

Heheh, I know you do. The problem is that I don't and I'm information hungry. :)

[Jannard]

We have learned a lot from the RED ONE. Heat is not a good thing. ASICs are the answer for us going forward. :-)

Jim

[liquidigital]

I remember reading somewhere that camera heat actually contributes to noise in the picture, which I had never considered. It was in reference to cooling within one of the Hasselblads. I wouldn't be surprised though if efficient cooling leads to even less noise than what you all have now.

[NateWeaver]

We have learned a lot from the RED ONE. Heat is not a good thing. ASICs are the answer for us going forward. :-)

Jim

Now I would imagine you have the confidence that if you spend crazy amounts on custom chips, you'll get it back.

[Michael Moreno]

Jim what's are asics??

Thanks

I too thought a peltier was the answer
I know you've been through all the options
Just curious like a nerd
Glad you got it figured out.

[Christian Berg]

This is the link for the WIKIpedia info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIC

[J Davis]

a - ha! Application-Specific Integrated Circuits
(thanks Christian)
hence the design for the 'Brain'.

So we will see sensor specific chips for each brain?
Will there still be 'builds' for the DSMC's?

[Michael Hastings]

We have learned a lot from the RED ONE. Heat is not a good thing. ASICs are the answer for us going forward. :-)

Jim

I've speculated about this on other threads - good to hear it confirmed. Jim, this should also help a great deal with power consumption, correct?

[JanneJansson]

With ASIC there is no "firmware upgrade". The cam you get is the cam you have, not like R1 with new updates. Unless there is a FPGA in there also doing maybe just the REDCODE stuff.

[Jannard]

There are more electronics in a brain than just an ASIC. But an ASIC does remove a lot of heat generating electronics that are in a RED ONE. Firmware upgrades are still possible in the Scarlet/EPIC system.

Jim

[Jason Ing]

Oh, I see... cut out any unnecessary overhead to reduce unnecessary heat. streamlining the system. sweet.

[Justin O'Neill]

It does look like ASICs consume much less power:


“We compared power consumption between our 150-nm ISSP1 structured ASIC, a 150-nm cell-based ASIC, and a 150-nm FPGA. Operating at full speed, the ISSP1 structured ASIC only consumed 1.7 times more power than the cell-based ASIC. The FPGA used 9.97 times the power of the cell-based ASIC (see Figure 1).

From: http://www.chipdesignmag.com/display.php?articleId=115&issueId=11

[Brook Willard]

There are more electronics in a brain than just an ASIC. But an ASIC does remove a lot of heat generating electronics that are in a RED ONE. Firmware upgrades are still possible in the Scarlet/EPIC system.

Jim

Good stuff, I dig it.

So will the rest of the cooling be passive? Other than the sensor block cooling?

[Tony Lorentzen]

But ASICs are very expensive to develop so I think RED is planning on selling a lot of these.

[I Bloom]

But ASICs are very expensive to develop so I think RED is planning on selling a lot of these.

Well think of it like this, they might build one chip for calculating wavelet transform from a tile of an image and put different numbers of them running in parallel into different cameras. That would immediately increase the volume of production, because it's the same chips in every camera doing that ubiquitous job.

Same with debayering or partial debayering on the fly for example. You might find the same chips in the brains/the IO units, your RedRay player and your AJA card (let's hope).

Who knows exactly the recipe but you get the idea.

Plus moving to proprietary chips might be a good way to put a damper on unfair Chinese competition :shiftyph34r:

IBloom

[Bruce Allen]

Very cool!

There are already working JPEG2000 ASICs. Eg
http://www.barco.com/designservices/en/products/jp2k_asic.asp
Since last time I checked REDCODE was heavily based on JPEG2000, it sounds like a smart idea that has already been proven to work well.

PS when are the Epic people complaining about the Scarlet's low price going to realize that it's the Scarlet's low price (and hence possibility of high volume sales) that mean the Epic can be so lowly-priced too?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Jay A. Kelley]

I don't think that's what they are complaining about Bruce.. And I believe there is merit to their worries. There is a pie with so much work out there, and all these brains are deviding the pie into smaller pieces.

For myself, it's not a worry, I've done the math, and my purchase of the Epic X is similar or less in cost than someone will pay for the Scarlet S35.. So I don't worry. Besides I do not expect to see a fully working and BUG FREE Epic until late late 09 or possibily 10. This means my wonderful RED (Who is being upgraded as we speak) is going to be with me for a while yet.

I want my PRIMES!!! :)

Jay