SCARLET/EPIC ASIC in RED RAY?

[Carsten Kurz]

There is little buzz about RED RAY lately - yet RED RAY currently is the only product on REDs main page which still has a clear '2009' availability sticking to it.


Am I right to assume that the same ASIC that is used in SCARLET and EPIC will also be the central magic pixie part of RED RAY and thus RED RAY, as a product with a lot less electromechanical/system complexity compared to the cams, will be quickly released after ASIC availability?


- Carsten

[Stephen Gentle]

Am I right to assume that the same ASIC that is used in SCARLET and EPIC will also be the central magic pixie part of RED RAY and thus RED RAY...?

I wouldn't think so - I'm sure that the RED RAY will feature a similar ASIC in there somewhere, because most renders of it showed a CF slot so it's likely you'll be able to play back REDCODE footage on it. But I think that the actual RED RAY codec is going to be vastly different from REDCODE (since it has a data rate much smaller, is RGB instead of RAW, is possibly an interframe codec (but would be even more amazing if it wasn't)). So I don't think that the central magic pixie part is going to be the same ASIC.

[Kyle Presley]

No, an ASIC is very specific in what it can do. I'm sure REDray will have its own specific internal components.

[Carsten Kurz]

Sure an ASIC is more fixed in what it can do (not necessarily 'specific'). But in order not to limit yourself to a very specific function, you would not burn too much product specific functionality in it, otherwise you end up with hardware-updates instead of software updates at some point. Consider that the cams also output RGB via HDMI, need good scaling, and RED RAY will also playback RED RAW. So one could say RED RAY is a RED cam without the camera part. I wouldn't even think that the ASIC does the specific RED RAY codec. That again would allow for little future upgrades. RED RAYs codec could use part of the ASICs functionality (e.g. wavelet core, scaling, filters), but otherwise a different, more general and software programable logic core for the higher levels of the codec, e.g. interframe.

- Carsten

[Gavin Greenwalt]

If they're going to re purpose chips they'll be REDRocket's chips. But I don't expect they're doing that either.

[Tim Whitcomb]

ASIC in this case is more "system on a chip" and enables the modularoty of EPIC/SCARTLET

I see no connection to ASIC dev and RED RAY.

Lets just wait until end of October and see what the new schedule looks like. I seriously doubt they will forget to address RED RAY, or 18mm RPP or other specs, acks, cameras, etc.

[Jack Kelly]

I very much doubt the ASIC in the RED RAY player is the same as the ASIC in the EPIC/SCARLET cameras. For one thing, the RED RAY player only has to decode, it doesn't have to encode.

The ASIC doing decompression in Blu-Ray player is a very different beast to the ASIC in an h.264 camcorder.

[Wayne Morellini]

A Asic can be a programmable circuit, and at the moment there are a number of high capacity general purpose processing engines out there that could be licensed. The best alternative is to use a programmable circuit with specific hardwired accelerated functions to improve performance (or reduce the power consumption) as Ambarella does with their leading low cost h264 technologies). So the same basic circuits can be shared among different products.