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MillimeterMark In
Jan 1, 2008 12:00 PM
Sony released its SxS card, which uses a PCI Express interface for 800Mbps high-speed data transfer and hot-swap capabilities, last year. Initial capacities are 8GB and 16GB.
Solid-state Recording Update
By Dan Ochiva
Solid-state recording for camcorders — long heralded and championed by Panasonic — is going wide, with developments across the broadcast and IT landscapes that have both imminent and longer-term implications for content creators.
It's not news that with Sony's introduction of its XDCAM EX last year (see digitalcontentproducer.com/cameras/revfeat/
first_look_xdcam_ex), the second shoe dropped on the validity of solid-state flash memory for professional camcorder use. While Panasonic has been employing its proprietary P2 storage since 2002, Sony's position was that it has been waiting for the next-generation, higher-throughput PCI Express card standard before changing. The new format, which Sony calls SxS (it's tweaked a Sandisk product with its own proprietary technology), uses a PCI Express interface for 800Mbps high-speed data transfer and hot-swap capabilities. Initial capacities are 8GB and 16GB. Panasonic P2 cards are now offered with a 32GB capacity.
On the high end, solid-state recording for camera systems is now being offered by Panavision, Thomson Grass Valley, Arri, and Red Digital Cinema, along with suppliers such as S.two and Codex Digital, the latter of which hopes to deliver a solid-state drive (SSD) version of its portable hard-drive-based storage this year.
The claims for solid-state over tape have been long-touted: A lack of moving parts eliminates seek time, latency, and other electro-mechanical delays and failures. But these same claims can also translate to advantages over that other videotape alternative — hard disk drives. While hard drives currently offer longer record times than readily available removable solid-state memory, they can fragment and slow down as they become full.
Like hard drives, solid-state devices are configured for our IT age, so they offer file-based operation that can be read immediately by nonlinear editing systems. However, storage based on solid-state memory delivers much faster data access — usually less than 0.01 millisecond or some 250 times faster than the fastest hard drives.
Flash-based SSDs only became widely available this past year. Samsung did have a 32GB SSD on the market in 2006, but it was relatively pricey, and it featured a slower interface than the company's current top product, a 64GB NAND-type Flash SSD. (NAND memory is the type found in the common USB stick drives and standard SSDs.)
Increased launch speed for today's large programs is one key attraction of SSDs. Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com) says the Samsung drive launched Adobe Photoshop CS3 in 5.8 seconds — compared to a leading hard drive, the Western Digital WD Raptor, which needed 9.3 seconds. Not a large margin perhaps, but such differences in program access times and throughput can add up throughout a day.
At the moment, SSD prices are high compared to the older hard-drive technology. The 64GB Samsung drive has a street price of around $1,000; comparable hard drives are priced at less than $100. On a hopeful note, Sandisk estimates that SSD prices should fall by about 60 percent annually. By 2010, DataQuest estimates that price gap reducing to a 3X difference.
Another indication of the continual change in the market was Intel's announcement of its Z-P140 SSD last month. Roughly the size of a penny, the chip storage device will initially be available in 2GB and 4GB capacities. With its read throughput of 40MBps, it compares favorably to more standard-sized storage — although the target market is smart phones and Ultra-Mobile PCs.
