Scarlet-X + Dragon = Epic-S?

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Soo...first off gotta say I'm excited for Scarlet! Ordered mine tonight! Will finally be part of this happy RED family. arty:

I was always really interested in what the Epic-S proposed. While it was estimated to cost a little more it was supposed to offer some more framerate options. So I wondering if with the proposed Dragon upgrade on the Scarlet, will it pretty much give us that "Epic-S" camera? I would easily pay another $5-8k for something like that.

Maybe Dragon Scarlet will be the true R1 replacement.

 

[Felix K.]

I think that Scarlet-X is Epic-S, the former Scarlet S35.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I think that Scarlet-X is Epic-S, the former Scarlet S35.

I agree to an extent, originally Epic-S was supposed to have 5k@60fps 2k@120fps. I think the Dragon upgrade might get us there, or closer to it. Add the cost of the upgrade and it's more in line with the previous pricing speculation on the Epic-S. Exciting times either way!!!

 

[Paul Cook]

Yeah I'm with you, I would have happily paid $15 k for something with frame rates around 120 @ 2k res? Not complaining, it is what it is and it's a thing of beauty...but if the might be an upgrade option in the future I'd bite ;-)

 

[Adam Howden]

Just wondering if anyone can point me to some posts on the Dragon sensor or tell me more about it?

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Yeah I'm with you, I would have happily paid $15 k for something with frame rates around 120 @ 2k res? Not complaining, it is what it is and it's a thing of beauty...but if the might be an upgrade option in the future I'd bite ;-)

Upgrades are good.

 

[Nick Wernham]

Yeah I'm with you, I would have happily paid $15 k for something with frame rates around 120 @ 2k res? Not complaining, it is what it is and it's a thing of beauty...but if the might be an upgrade option in the future I'd bite ;-)

I might too. I'm very happy with where the camera is at right now. Definitely pleased with the trade off of some computing power in favour of an S35 sensor.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I think the Epic-S is dead. Jim said they were having trouble with Chip Yields. So what that says to me is that if they were having Epic-X chip yield problems (enough problems to necessitate an entire new product line) then they would have had the exact same problems with Epic-S. And if only say... 40% of your Epic-S boards are 100% then you can't do much about it.

By the way this isn't unique to RED. This is how all high-end electronics work. When you buy a 'cheap' Intel chip you're almost always buying the top of the line chip rejects that had a defect making a core unusable or the chip unstable at full GHZ. So what they do is they progressively sell the rejects at discount rates until their entire supply is out.

If they are spinning Epic boards and a bunch of them have rejects that only let them perform at a fraction of their potential then it makes sense to sell them as a Scarlet-X. But that same problem would afflict Epic-S and there would be no way to sell an even less capable Epic-S (The difference between Epic-> Scarlet X and Epic-S- > Still camera.) High failure rates would mean they would need to increase the cost... which would make it unattractive.

So I think what they saw was that the Epic-S with Epic-X yields wouldn't be economically viable. And since the Scarlet-X is evidently using partially enabled Epic boards they can sell them at the discount rate instead of them just being thrown away. Scarlet-X processors from the twitter summaries I was reading sounds like the literal by-products of Epic-X processors. We get a reduced price camera and RED gets to use far more of their chips. Everybody wins!

So that's why we stopped hearing about the Epic-S right around the time that Epic-X production started ramping up. Again, not something unique to RED. You see this with Graphics chips all the time. If a chip doesn't have very good yields you'll see a much higher volume of "budget" cards which are rejected top of the line cards. Eventually they'll improve the manufacturing and then they could consider manufacturing a second line of stripped down chips.

The real question is: how big is Dragon?

 

[Jesper Sichlau]

The real question is: how big is Dragon?

After a night like this... it's pretty big

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Good pickup on this Gavin, I was posting about this on another forum. But it does not have to be. Refinements in the silicon process, design rules, and design itself can reduce this. Back in the 80's it got so bad (decreasing sizes) one foundry kept having a 90% defective rate that could not be solved and had to close down.

 

[Jeffrey Loewe]

I agree to an extent, originally Epic-S was supposed to have 5k@60fps 2k@120fps. I think the Dragon upgrade might get us there, or closer to it. Add the cost of the upgrade and it's more in line with the previous pricing speculation on the Epic-S. Exciting times either way!!!

They did mention firmware upgrades along the way enabling better HDRx performance. I'd imagine we'd get some additional frame rates there. I'd love to have 5K 24fps...