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SD9 electronics

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Erik Magnuson said:
Ah, but this was the big debate: how much processing is actually required?
Click to expand...
Member said:
In the height of Foveon mania, some seemed to think that
almost nothing is done onboard.
Click to expand...
I still think so, well except compression. If you see the preview image compared to the spp output it is like night and day but just the plain RAW looks worse. So I would assume that not much is actually done to the RAW data, while the preview processing takes up 1 or 2 seconds.
Member said:
And, given "overkill" why cannot
the SD10 even reach the body mechanical rate? The sensor
theoretical is now 4.4FPS.
Click to expand...
Well but that leads us to the question is the Strongarm really that much involved in the sensor -> buffer transfer or is it just that the bus between the two is not fast enough (costfactor).
Member said:
AFAIK, cameras like the 300D essentially have two processors. The
x86 core handles the menus and the I/O while a DSP handles the
demosaicing and the JPEG. It looks like the SD9/10 have to do
everything in the StrongARM (hence no JPEG). Remember the Sigma
must do at least some onboard decoding for the preview bitmaps and
review mode.
Click to expand...
Yes see above concerning preview, given the fact of the number of produced SD9/10 it is probably not such a big suprise that it might be cheaper to do everything in the strongarm.

--
Anything you post will be misquoted & used against you.

http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9/dominic_gross_sd10
 
(Just a little lighthearted stir...)

Now that you've pulled it apart, does it look like the components could (relatively) easily be housed in something else? Like a custom body with an interchangeable Sigma/Nikon/Canon mount? :-)

Not that I really mind, since I only own SAF lenses, but lots seem to be keen on the idea. Think of it as "aftermarket tuning" for SD9 inners...
 
Dominic Groß said:
I still think so, well except compression. If you see the preview
image compared to the spp output it is like night and day but just
the plain RAW looks worse.
Click to expand...
But we don't know how "raw" is X3F. Or if anything interesting is done on the analog side.
Dominic Groß said:
So I would assume that not much is
actually done to the RAW data, while the preview processing takes
up 1 or 2 seconds.
Click to expand...
1 or 2 seconds to do a 568x378 640k 8-bit pixel image?
Dominic Groß said:
Yes see above concerning preview, given the fact of the number of
produced SD9/10 it is probably not such a big suprise that it might
be cheaper to do everything in the strongarm.
Click to expand...
Yes, the use of mostly off-the-shelf parts is typical comparatively low-volume, initial production designs. I'll bet the proposed Polaroid uses a lot more custom silicon.

--
Erik
 
Actually, old to me means tried and true. I've built some applications on a StrongArm and they did well, tho power is a concern yes. But it has some history and that is what I meant when I reacted to it.

david
ole thofte said:
David Hughes said:
I'll be darned. Strongarm processor. That speaks volumes right
there.

Excellent volumes I might add.
Click to expand...
I'm curious of what is special about the Strongarm processor. I
Googled a little and found out that this processor is a bit old and
has a reputation of being powerhungry? Maybe this could explain
some of the powerissues of SDxx and why it helps 'resetting' by
pulling the power???

ole thofte
--
http://www.pbase.com/thofte
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--
Digital Frame - http://www.giphantie.com
Personal Gallery- http://david.oldcolo.com/gallery/sd9
...and - http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9
 
I think GPL only requires you to make your source available if you alter it in some way from the original. I doubt that it would run linux, not even a stripped down version.

Wes.

http://www.pbase.com/wes_armour
JKP said:
ole thofte said:
I would too. They are probably using Linux......I saw there was a
pocket PC with the Strongarm processor using that OS.
Click to expand...
If thats the case, there should be the source code included
somewhere on
the installation CD... :)
Click to expand...
 
Erik Magnuson said:
Or if anything interesting is
done on the analog side.
Click to expand...
That might be even more interesting (although unrelated to the digital processing power) but well too bad we can't tell anything about it...
Member said:
1 or 2 seconds to do a 568x378 640k 8-bit pixel image?
Click to expand...
Yes I thought you already had a SD9 to try it?

After taking the image there is noticably more lag till the preview image comes up than with other Cameras (I would say around 1 sec).

If the x3f is already on the card and you review it and zoom in to 100% it takes 2-3 sec till the final preview (denoised, fullresolution) is displayed.

--
Anything you post will be misquoted & used against you.

http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9/dominic_gross_sd10
 
hiesve said:
I really would like to know waht kind of OS / firmware the Sigma
SD9/10 use. Maybe some of you have read the Canon 300D-Thread of
OS-tweaks.

I am not saying, that it is necessary to tweak SD10s current OS,
but I am sure there are plenty ideas to add usefull function to the
firmware.
Click to expand...
Indeed.

Simple stuff:
Translating menus into other languages

Making the camera less stealable by showing the owners name & address on the screen when it is turned on.

Harder:
Adding some kind of watermark to the pictures

in-camera TIFF. (much less processing than jpeg, keeps all sensor information, is a std. format that common software understands)

in-camera jpeg. Perhaps it'll be too slow to do while shooting, but the processor can work on it while you drive home. in-camera cropping & other simple adjustments.
image stacking
 
Helge Hafting said:
Simple stuff:
Translating menus into other languages

Making the camera less stealable by showing the owners name &
address on the screen when it is turned on.
Click to expand...
Both simple while the last seems pretty uneffective to me...
Helge Hafting said:
Harder:
in-camera TIFF. (much less processing than jpeg, keeps all sensor
information, is a std. format that common software understands)
Click to expand...
No, the jpeg compression is not the problem. Color correcting and denoising the file and so on needs more processing power than you will find there. It does not really matter if you want to save to jpeg or Tiff.
Helge Hafting said:
in-camera jpeg. Perhaps it'll be too slow to do while shooting,
but the processor can work on it while you drive home.
Click to expand...
Hehe, strange idea. How long would you be willing to wait for such a low quality (because the routines that create the slow preview don't seem to be up to what we know from SPP) jpeg?

--
Anything you post will be misquoted & used against you.

http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9/dominic_gross_sd10
 
Any ideas how fast the SDRAM interface of the SA 1110 really is?

I can't imagine that this should really be the bottleneck that limits us to 1.x fps. Or maybe it is not running at full speed to save power?

--
Anything you post will be misquoted & used against you.

http://www.pbase.com/sigmasd9/dominic_gross_sd10
 
wes~armour said:
I think GPL only requires you to make your source available if you
alter it in some way from the original. I doubt that it would run
linux, not even a stripped down version.
Click to expand...
Of course it would. The SD9 is huge, relative to some of the things people run "stripped down" Linux on. Although the term to search for is "embedded linux".

http://www.linuxdevices.com/

Yes, that is a Linux powered wrist watch on the front page ;)

Click the "devices" link and you'll see a pager running Linux, a Linux web phone, and a bunch of Linux PDAs. At least 1/2 of these devices use strongarm. Pretty much all have less RAM and flash than the SD9.

Got a Linksys router? It's an embedded Linux box.

There's a Linux releaxe for iPod, and a "palm under Linux" app that lets you use it as an organizer.

Some other fun links
http://www.embedded-linux.org/
http://www.uclinux.org/
http://lwn.net/Articles/78309/

--
A cyberstalker told me not to post anymore...
So I'm posting even more!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
 
Sorry Joe,

I haven't been clear, I know that a strongarm processor can run linux, I'm just not so sure that the sd* would use it. (I should have used the word "use" rather than "run" in my previous post).

Wes

http://www.pbase.com/wes_armour
Joseph S. Wisniewski said:
wes~armour said:
I think GPL only requires you to make your source available if you
alter it in some way from the original. I doubt that it would run
linux, not even a stripped down version.
Click to expand...
Of course it would. The SD9 is huge, relative to some of the things
people run "stripped down" Linux on. Although the term to search
for is "embedded linux".

http://www.linuxdevices.com/

Yes, that is a Linux powered wrist watch on the front page ;)

Click the "devices" link and you'll see a pager running Linux, a
Linux web phone, and a bunch of Linux PDAs. At least 1/2 of these
devices use strongarm. Pretty much all have less RAM and flash than
the SD9.

Got a Linksys router? It's an embedded Linux box.

There's a Linux releaxe for iPod, and a "palm under Linux" app that
lets you use it as an organizer.

Some other fun links
http://www.embedded-linux.org/
http://www.uclinux.org/
http://lwn.net/Articles/78309/

--
A cyberstalker told me not to post anymore...
So I'm posting even more!

Ciao!

Joe

http://www.swissarmyfork.com
Click to expand...
 
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