The Update Thread

[Kemalettin Sert]

i have been hearing helium since last year.So this is the new project then?

A New Use for Helium


A hard drive sealed in helium has enormous performance advantages over the standard hard drive.

Why Helium?

Helium has the lowest density and lowest specific heat of all nonflammable substances. These two characteristics make helium the gas of choice for many specialized uses. Its primary use is as a coolant in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. That use has created a strong demand for a natural gas byproduct that can be produced in just a few parts of the world with unusual geologic conditions.

Now another use could begin to consume this rare gas even faster. Western Digital has produced the first computer hard drive sealed in a helium atmosphere. The drive was designed for use in data centers where hundreds or thousands of computers are operating.

Why helium? Helium has just 1/7 the density of air. This sealed helium drive produces less air turbulence, which in turn saves power consumption, produces less heat, produces fewer vibrations, makes less noise, allows greater drive capacity and results in a much lower total cost of operation. The drives are expensive to manufacture, but that cost is recovered in energy savings and performance gains.


Lower Turbulence

Compared to air, helium's lower density allows the drive to spin with much less turbulence. The lower level of turbulence allows the motor to turn the drive with a power consumption savings of 23%. And, the lower level of turbulence allows seven platters to operate in a one-inch high drive, instead of five. This increases the storage capacity of the drive by 50 percent - from 4 TB to 6 TB - and increases the storage capacity of a server and its weight per TB.


Less Noise

The lower level of air turbulence inside of the drive will reduce the amount of vibration produced by the spinning platters. The lower vibration level has been found to reduce the amount of noise produced by the drive by about 30%.


Less Heat

The lower turbulence within the drive means there is less friction produced between air molecules. This allows the drive to operate at a temperature that is about 4 degrees Celsius cooler within the drive. This means that the drive will shed less heat into the data center and lower the amount of air conditioning required - which results in another way to save power.


The Fugitive Gas Challenge

Producing a hard drive sealed in a helium environment was an enormous challenge. Why? Helium atoms are so small that they can seep through almost any material. Creating a case that will contain helium over a long period of time was the most difficult part of producing the drive - and the reason why helium drives did not go into use a long time ago.

The tightly-sealed case produces a few more advantages. Humidity, dust and other contaminants are kept out. This is expected to reduce drive failure rates and increase the average life expectancy of the helium drive.

The helium hard drive is an example of how using special materials creates special challenges but can result in exceptional savings.

 

[Curtis Edlin]

Would it be too optimistic to think I may get my Scarlet-W allocated today for my birthday hehe.

 

[Andrei Goaga]

Would it be too optimistic to think I may get my Scarlet-W allocated today for my birthday hehe.

Happy birthday

 

[Curtis Edlin]

Happy birthday

Thanks man, I really appreciate that!

 

[Scott Evans]

So scarlet-w is on track for a fall delivery if you order today still, is there any kind of timetable like this for Raven orders to get some perspective. Still on the 25th from what I can tell.

 

[Arturo Sánchez]

I hope that with the arrival of the new Helium sensors RED doesn't increase the price of the Weapon and Epic; like they did with the Epic and Scarlet with arrival of the Dragon sensors.

I don't understand that a current body with a new sensor (let's say Scarlet Dragon) costs more than a new body with the same sensor (let's say Scarlet W).

I wish that the Epic Helium costs no more than the Epic X Dragon, please RED make it a bit competitive.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I hope that with the arrival of the new Helium sensors RED doesn't increase the price of the Weapon and Epic; like they did with the Epic and Scarlet with arrival of the Dragon sensors.

I don't understand that a current body with a new sensor (let's say Scarlet Dragon) costs more than a new body with the same sensor (let's say Scarlet W).

I wish that the Epic Helium costs no more than the Epic X Dragon, please RED make it a bit competitive.

My guess is an Epic-W brain will cost $20-25K.

Just a guess.

 

[Louis Maddalena]

I hope that with the arrival of the new Helium sensors RED doesn't increase the price of the Weapon and Epic; like they did with the Epic and Scarlet with arrival of the Dragon sensors.

I don't understand that a current body with a new sensor (let's say Scarlet Dragon) costs more than a new body with the same sensor (let's say Scarlet W).

I wish that the Epic Helium costs no more than the Epic X Dragon, please RED make it a bit competitive.

I would count on the price increasing with the new technology. They increase the price because the new sensor usually costs more so they need to increase the price. Don't forget RED is a business and they need to make the margins they make in order to keep the lights on, employees paid, and us (their customers) happy with further improvements and R&D on accessories.

 

[Arturo Sánchez]

I understand it, new technology, but they lower the prices when they release a new body (dsmc2) through they rise the prices when they release a new sensor (dragon). In both cases they need need R&D.

I think that they maintain or lower the price when they release a new body because to make the crowd jump to the new system and then buy the new accesories-modules

I would count on the price increasing with the new technology. They increase the price because the new sensor usually costs more so they need to increase the price. Don't forget RED is a business and they need to make the margins they make in order to keep the lights on, employees paid, and us (their customers) happy with further improvements and R&D on accessories.

 

[Arturo Sánchez]

Scarlet W body only is 10,000 and the cheapest Weapon is 30,000, so there is a huge gap in between.
I think that a good and fair price would be 18,000

 

[Rakesh Malik]

I understand it, new technology, but they don't rise the prices when they release a new body (dsmc2) through they release the prices when they release a new sensor (dragon). In both cases they need need R&D

Large chips in general cost quite a bit to manufacture for fabs that don't have the volumes of the likes of Intel and UMC, and sensors also don't gain from the luxury of being able to simply remap a bad photosite like you can with a bad cache block on a processor or DRAM chip, so it's hard to get yields up and costs down with big sensors.

 

[Arturo Sánchez]

Thanks for sharing your knlowledge, I have nothing to say about it; but why is an Epic Dragon more expensive than an Epic MX, is the Dragon sensor more expensive to produce than the MX sensor? Every latest RED sensor is more expensive to produce than its predecessor, really?

Is the launch price of a 2017 Mustang higher than the launch price of a 2016 Mustang? No, so why RED price they new sensor cameras like that?

Large chips in general cost quite a bit to manufacture for fabs that don't have the volumes of the likes of Intel and UMC, and sensors also don't gain from the luxury of being able to simply remap a bad photosite like you can with a bad cache block on a processor or DRAM chip, so it's hard to get yields up and costs down with big sensors.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Thanks for sharing your knlowledge, I have nothing to say about it; but why is an Epic Dragon more expensive than an Epic MX, is the Dragon sensor more expensive to produce than the MX sensor? Every latest RED sensor is more expensive to produce than its predecessor, really?

Is the launch price of a 2017 Mustang higher than the launch price of a 2016 Mustang? No, so why RED price they new sensor cameras like that?

Because presumably over time, certain R&D costs go down, and those savings get passed to the customer.

The original EPIC MX was clearly way ahead of its time (ie lots of tech in a SMALL package), and the R&D no doubt was reflected in the price.

But 5 years later, a lot of these achievements have (presumably) paid for themselves, and RED (I'm assuming) passes the savings on to us the customers.

Also, as RED has become more successful, they've been selling MORE cameras, so it's also a numbers game. They can bring DOWN costs, if volume keeps going up. So there's that.

And then there's just pure economics. The market is SWAMPED with such a diverse array of price-points ($5K, $10K, $20K, $30K), RED clearly feels the need to address as many of these as they can, and no longer limit themselves to just TWO cameras.

As with their tech, RED's market strategy is clearly always evolving, always changing.

Doesn't surprise me one bit; in fact, I'm grateful! As the net result has been BETTER TECH at BETTER PRICES for US, the customer.

Win win.

 

[Rakesh Malik]

Thanks for sharing your knlowledge, I have nothing to say about it; but why is an Epic Dragon more expensive than an Epic MX, is the Dragon sensor more expensive to produce than the MX sensor? Every latest RED sensor is more expensive to produce than its predecessor, really?

Is the launch price of a 2017 Mustang higher than the launch price of a 2016 Mustang? No, so why RED price they new sensor cameras like that?

There's also hardly any difference between the 2016 and 2017 models of... pretty much any car. Their evolution has been largely deceased for decades (look at their gas mileage for example)... what improvements we do see from one model to the next are minimal, usually just extra luxuries and gimmicks and easthetics.

Cameras on the other hand have, across the board, evolved a lot over the last few years. The sensors get bigger, they're engineering more and more logic into them... Red's have gone from 12-bit to 16-bit, and consider how much data even a Raven is pulling off of that beast, since it has to measure a 16-bit value from each photosite once per frame... THEN process it into raw sensor data and only then can it compress that data in order to save it to disk.

Compare that to a Red One's data rate...

Cameras in general have progressed more in the past five years alone than cars have in the last 60.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

That's what happens when you let an "industry" run things. Consumer cameras early last decade were getting worse and worse, as industry economised and lowered performance. We kicked up a fuss and started the cheap cinema camera projects and it changed up, and then SI and Red came on board.

Every seen the 200 mpg carborator, have info at home on that. This was around the1920's They changed the formulation of gas and stopped those carborators from reaching so high. So all the fan boys supporting industry do us little good. There are a lot of old improvements in the car industry that went away, even the atomic car engine.

If Jim wanted to today, he could vastly out do Tesla, all he has to do us give me a call.

I've actually been planning on writing to a local magazine putting forwards a cheap conversion to diesel hybrid, so that community groups and other such individuals could run their old vans much cheaper.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

About chips guys, they will recover the costs (but by now should pay for the sensor out if past profit, otherwise companies will undercut) but the new chips are smaller which gives you more sensors per wafer, reducing costs compared to larger ones. However, maybe this is a cheap sensor item, aimed for lower priced cameras (Raven and below) like the 6k in the Red camera phone patent. I don't car, as long as that thing can get 16 stop dragon like latitude and color pickup I'd be happy (Equivalent low light and signal to noise would be harder. So I don't hold my hopes out completely for that. )

 

[Patrick Elliott]

So the 8K Helium upgrade would have to be $15-$20k more to Epic owners compared to Weapon owners... right? Otherwise, what was the point of purchasing a Weapon? For Pro Res? Wasn't there a point where even the Magnesium would not be able to handle 8k? Now we have an Epic that can?

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Its was a bigger format, maybe. The helium could have worse noise and low light onnthe smaller pixeks, depends onbwhat they have done, where the refinements/new technology are. Don't worry about it, has anybody from Red said it will be even more then 13-14 stops. Trust they will look after you Patrick for now.

From what was said, the helium is much further ahead than planned. This might indicate it was meant firba November product at the earliest, or NAB next year. With the delays, maybe weapon was not meant to be so close However, they can't afford to delay due to the competition, with BM likely to accelerate dye to the mini delays, bwith product next NAB, maybe earlier. Maybe 8k Ursa, or even mini. The 8k gopro has been delayed until this year, so 8k is not too high end technically. Siny has been developing a 16k holographic camera for years (that is a minimum resolution, so we might even get 32k one day).

 

[David Ruzicka]

So many are hung up on a how many K camera got. That doesn't make camera better

 

[Nick Morrison]

So many are hung up on a how many K camera got. That doesn't make camera better

True. But if they are BETTER pixels, then that's another story. And having extra K's CAN be an advantage. Put them together - MORE BETTER PIXELS...then that's an intoxicating combo (for many).