Samsung's Possible P2 alternative?
 

Samsung just announced a 32GB flash (RAM) disk drive:

read speed 57MB/s
write speed 32MB/s

expect to sell for between $700 and $1000

Samsung claims it uses just 5% of the power (.1 watt idle, .5watt under load) of a notebook drive, so battery life would be impressive.

To be released "soon"

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/21/32gb_ssd_samsung/

Doubtful. I highly doubt that it is capable of capturing and storing DVCPRO HD footage. It is nothing more than a large FLASH hard drive.

P2s are 4 flash cards "raided" together in a unique fashion.

You can try, but my guess from reading that article, it ain't gonna cut it.

The drive supposedly reads and writes at 57MBs and 32MBs. If true, it's should be enough for HDV.

It just shows that prices should drop with increase in technology that makes it easier to develop cheaper cards with more memory than what you have now.

I'm just wondering if the HVX has a limit on memory usuage. Ex: My Gateway brand 5MP digital camera that I purchased when it first came out uses SD cards. It says it can't handle more than 512MBs, so all the new 1gig SD cards out, I can't use.

Well, if those write speeds in the article are even close to accurate, then these drives could easily handle DVCPROHD.

I doubt we'll see Panasonic implement something like this though. They seem to have their minds made up about P2 and its SD card configuration.

Now a company like Spec-Comm, that's jumped through the hoops of basically reverse engineering the P2 architecture.. well that's a different story. Obviously a third party with a grasp of the P2 interface could theoretically make something like this work.

I bet if someone like Spec-Comm bundles that flash drive into a P2 compatable device, they'd sell like hot cakes for $1500. That's 80 minutes of 720P/24. Heck, even half an hour of 1080i is pretty respectable.

www.philipwilliams.com

We are looking forward to making solid state drives an option for the CinePorter™. There are many issues to overcome other than the data dates, such as formatting options, how they handle memory fragmentation internally and so on. We'll have to see when we get our hands on these.

David Linetsky
President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Drive
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
davidl@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com

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Thanks for the update David, good to know you're looking at additional options as they become available.

Judging by the size and the price... I would guess it is 4 raided 8gb smaller cards. For many workflows, destructive media just is not the way to go... not until it is near the cost of tape.



ash =o)