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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

RED STATION

apple still hasn't commited to USB 3.0...

We are keeping an eye on it though.. And we will be ready for lightpipe or usb 3 or whatever. That's the advantage of a modular architecture.
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The more I read the more I believe Lightpeak is gonna be the new standard. It may be something Red should seriously look at if you haven't already done so. I wouldn't be surprised if we see an announcement by the end of the year that Apple and Intel have signed an exclusive deal. The question is whether Intel will push both standards Lightpeak and USB 3 (for mac products) or just opt for LightPeak
Apple is pushing Intel with their talks with AMD and LightPeak may be the way to keep Apple happy and the relationship sweet.
 
the lightpeak / lightpipe solution seems to be a good one but it doesn't seem to have gained much traction anywhere yet... Lightpipe actually has a bit of use in audio but Lightpeak doesnt have anything out yet that I know of.

As for modularity, the data modules all share the same metal case ( minus the 3.5" chassis of course ) which is a good chunk of the cost.. when forward technology comes available, you just swap out the boards inside with a new backplate, thats the way we designed it, much like the side CF panel on the red one.
 
Jarred Land said:
the lightpeak / lightpipe solution seems to be a good one but it doesn't seem to have gained much traction anywhere yet... Lightpipe actually has a bit of use in audio but Lightpeak doesnt have anything out yet that I know of.

As for modularity, the data modules all share the same metal case ( minus the 3.5" chassis of course ) which is a good chunk of the cost.. when forward technology comes available, you just swap out the boards inside with a new backplate, thats the way we designed it, much like the side CF panel on the red one.
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Yeah, I believe that Intel showed the technology last year for lightpeak but said it is still in the early stage of development.

I just ADAT lightpipe in my studio (music), and it's pretty standard. Nothing special about it and it really doesn't move that much data compared to lightpeak. It's also antiquated, people are basically using it in ways the original design was not intended to push higher frequency.

But, I just wanted to say that is AWSOME that I'll be able to replace the innards at some point if something new comes out that I need interface wise. Wow. Thanks! I can say for sure NO OTHER card reader I have used has had that as a future feature.
 
That's great to know, Jarred.

As for USB 3.0, I'm finding it to be more problematic than practical right now. No well-implemented PCI to USB 3 cards out there yet in PC land and like none in the Mac world. I've had the best luck so far with the ASUS and Buffalo USB3 cards, but still some device compatibility issues. eSATA is still faster and it's perfectly stable.

Lightpeak isn't quite done yet. It seems to be having trouble gaining momentum...
 
Lightpeak is being developed jointly by Apple and Intel with other companies but these are the two main players. I think its gonna be the next big announcement by the two.
We wont see anything about LightPeak until it is launched, a few videos of working prototypes have been posted by Intel. As it is an optical standard I think it would
be perfect for Apples products including MacBooks, ipad and Pro Macs.
In theory it may be that last cable needed to connect all your devices (one cable to rule them all) including monitors, computers and accessories. With transfer speeds in theory of 10- 100 gbps it should meet all your transfer needs for a long time to come.
P.S It can also power devices to a higher standard than current bus technology
 
Rick Burnett said:
Nothing special about it and it really doesn't move that much data compared to lightpeak. It's also antiquated, people are basically using it in ways the original design was not intended to push higher frequency.
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agree... its funny how some things stick and some things do not.

E-SATA in my opinion is one of the worst interfaces ever invented.. not sure how they left power off that cable.. but for some reason it was adopted and everyone uses it ( including us ) because its the speed champ.
 
Jarred Land said:
agree... its funny how some things stick and some things do not.

E-SATA in my opinion is one of the worst interfaces ever invented.. not sure how they left power off that cable.. but for some reason it was adopted and everyone uses it ( including us ) because its the speed champ.
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Sadly, (VHS vs Beta) the best technology seems to rarely win out. When I think of all the compatibility problems I have had on macs and window machines with FireWire, USB, PCI, PCI-X and PCIe over the last ten years or more, it's like I've just chosen to forget that pain. I'll never forget the iMac hook up your device to another FW device and THEN into the iMac to get it to work :) Or the HORRIBLE Oxford FW chipset that killed one of my drives once. For this alone USB3 scares the hell out of me.

I will say one thing for ADAT though, it works perfectly. I have NEVER had a problem with it. Now, using 6 different digital audio devices at the same time, well, that's a whole new story :) Don't get me started on wordclock!

Apple isn't even on the USB3 consortium from what I can tell. They'll probably implement it when the IP starts to become solid, but mainly because they'll continue to have USB for awhile for all the devices that need it. It's FW that I am worried is going to drop off the device sooner rather than later. BUT, hopefully they'll have some sort of Lightpeak to FW conversion box or something. I could live with that.

Apple is notorious for "Oh, sorry, you can't have that port anymore". Like, for my MacBook Pro, I cannot get composite out anymore from the video out. Since I do live VJing at venues I do not control the visual system, I have to bring MORE equipment thanks to apple.

I will say one thing, at least eSata is better than the IDE connectors :) Or how about the MFM or RLL even before that! But yeah, more than once cable was just a huge oversight in my opinion.

By the way, anyone know what the fastest say 2G CF card is? I want to do some benchmarks with my Red CF reader versus my lexmark over USB, FW and eSata, but I want to get a card I know is faster than the technologies.
 
Good news on the replaceable circuit boards. I guess that also means if you break a connector it'll be less expensive to replace as well.

Does light peak include power in a separate line? I thought it was an optical connector.

I suppose the argument could be made that any interface that needs 10+gbs will also need external power anyway.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Good news on the replaceable circuit boards. I guess that also means if you break a connector it'll be less expensive to replace as well.

Does light peak include power in a separate line? I thought it was an optical connector.

I suppose the argument could be made that any interface that needs 10+gbs will also need external power anyway.
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It can include power also.

It going to hard to pin down when light peak becomes viable.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Good news on the replaceable circuit boards. I guess that also means if you break a connector it'll be less expensive to replace as well.

Does light peak include power in a separate line? I thought it was an optical connector.

I suppose the argument could be made that any interface that needs 10+gbs will also need external power anyway.
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Actually, that is a very valid question. Mainly because Intel has stated that they envision one bus to connect all things to the system. For a mouse or keyboard, having an additional power source doesn't make sense.
 
Jarred Land said:
E-SATA in my opinion is one of the worst interfaces ever invented.. not sure how they left power off that cable..
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Because SATA was not originally designed to be used externally. However the PC market demanded an external solution and we endured a long period of non-standardized connectors and solutions to make it happen. Most vendors were simply using standard internal SATA cabling and piping it outside their boxes with a simple coupler. eSATA didn't come to be until 2004 with the release of the 3Gbps SATA-II spec. And at that time, it was primarily targeted to drive 3.5" HDDs or RAID enclosures. Power on the same cable didn't make a whole lot of sense with that, as power requirements were never consistent and needs were all over the place so a consensus couldn't be reached as to what sort of power, if any, should be included.

SATA was screwed up again with the introduction of SATA 3.0. Which once again failed to designate appropriate specs for external 6Gbps connectivity. The 3.1 spec is only about 7 months old at this point and was a revision to define cabling requirements for eSATA at 6Gbps.

IMO, eSATA should have had the provision for an optional power connection. I think the SATA-IO organization looked at this in the entirely wrong way. They should have incorporated the means for optional power to assist compact mobile devices. They were just not very forward in their thinking of how SATA would be used. At this point, they don't seem interested in improving on the standard beyond bumping data rates as controller technology allows.
 
I was a bit disapointed (but not surprised) to see that Apple didn't include USB 3 in their new Macbook Pros...

I hope next year we'll start to see the LighPeak technology come to life, I really like the idea behind it. One cable to rule them all...
I just hope they won't make so many different connectors (like they did for USB). It always drives me crazy when I want to plug an USB camera or drive into my computer, and realize it uses a non standard USB conector...

And thank you Red for allowing us to swap boards in the Red station as new technologies become available.
 
Rick Burnett said:
Completely agreed. I've even seen some SSDs that work great when they start, then degrade rapidly, which is probably a heat issue and a problems with their control circuitry.
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This has to do with how SSD's delete and/or overwrite data. They can't just overwrite an individual sector as can be done on spinning media, it gets much more complicated.

Thus, SSD's prefer to write to new locations as much as possible, rather than over writing. Once enough writes have occured (even if the disk is not even close to full), new writes gat slowed down because the pages they are being written to have to be cleared, and in some cases reorganized.

It's why defrags are hard on SSD's, althought the new "TRIM" standard when fully implmented helps.

-sc
 
C.H.Haskell said:
Sorry I cant find this info but are these actually shipping?
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I ordered mine, but haven't received a tracking # or anything yet. I've not ordered from Red so I am not sure what to expect in terms of how they process orders.

I will say, I ordered VERY VERY quickly after the product became available at the store.
 
Steven Caesare said:
This has to do with how SSD's delete and/or overwrite data. They can't just overwrite an individual sector as can be done on spinning media, it gets much more complicated.

Thus, SSD's prefer to write to new locations as much as possible, rather than over writing. Once enough writes have occured (even if the disk is not even close to full), new writes gat slowed down because the pages they are being written to have to be cleared, and in some cases reorganized.

It's why defrags are hard on SSD's, althought the new "TRIM" standard when fully implmented helps.

-sc
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Thanks for pointing that out. It brings up an interesting question, when using an SSD with a Red camera, does it do the full format where it actually clears out all the pages?

It also has me nervous about OSX (non red related). I was going to get an SSD for my laptop, but I use my drives close to full. Sounds like I'd have to get one of the really fast SSD drives so that when it does slow down, it's not slower than spinning media speeds.
 
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