Nanotechnology Now - The Biggest Format is Controlled by the Smallest Technology

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Tammy Gordin

Abstract:
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB2015) convention in Las Vegas this year featured the 5th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 processors which are a new wave of 14nm processors. These processors can be used to produce better quality video and photographic media.

April 29th, 2015

The Biggest Format is Controlled by the Smallest Technology

After I attended CES2015, I reported on the Quantum Dot technology found in 4K televisions. This month, I attended the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB2015) convention, also in Las Vegas. The biggest buzzwords were 4K and 8K. Everyone rushed to see the exhibits and demos for 4K and 8K cameras, TVs and recording media.

Author checking out the Canon C300 Mark II, with Canon 50 mm lens and Atomos Shogun recorder.

Since I've already reported on 4K technology and it's relationship to nanotechnology. I will give you're an idea of the quality of 8K. Look at the picture below. That is not only a picture of a picture, but a picture of a video frame. To me, it looks like a picture of something real. Think about it. That's 8K.

One frame of 8K video.

I went to NAB wondering what I would write about, that is, what kind of nanotechnology I would find related to broadcasting, cameras, lighting/sound, internet business ventures. I was delighted to find the 5th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor family.

Intel 5th Gen processor

With this product, Intel delivers improved system and graphics performance, presents more natural and immersive user experiences, and enables longer battery life compared to previous generations. Furthermore, this technology has full media acceleration hardware necessary for 264 playback. (264 is a video codec standard which can achieve high quality video in relatively low bitrates. It should not surprise you that 265 is on it way.) 5th Gen i7 processors are Intel's latest wave of 14nm processors with micro-architecture that includes shared memory between the CPU and graphics processor. (See Wikipedia's entry: 14 nanometer )

This gives you an idea of the size of the processor.

{Picture credit techradar. You can also get an idea of scale if you look at the picture of me with the C300. You can see the processor sitting on the desk, in a plexiglass case, in front of the First RAW Media Procession description board and next to the stack of small brochures. These are both the CPU and the graphics card on one tiny chip.}

As good as 4K and 8K sound and look, this does not make the Ultra HD world perfect. There is much talk in the digital recording world of shooting RAW. This is a file format that captures all the image-data recorded by the sensor, as opposed to a popular format, such as JPEG, that compresses images, and loses some of the data. Obviously, RAW gives you higher quality images than the standard formats and after you invest in expensive 4K equipment, this is exactly what you want. With RAW, you will produce higher quality images and be able to make corrections you could not make with a JPEG image.

Description of Intel 5th Gen processor

Fortunately, for those who want to work in linear space for as long as possible, the upper end cameras do shoot RAW. The problem with RAW is that you need hardware to handle all the data collected. In other words, it takes a lot of processor power to deal with raw because it's not properly demonsaic.

When you demosaic, you use an algorithm to reconstruct a full color image from the incomplete color samples. Demosaicing is part of processing that renders images into a view-able format, such as JPEG. Most digital cameras use a single image sensor overlaid with a color filter array. This means you don't have all the data available to you because even though the hardware exists to process RAW, there is still the need for a bigger and better way to handle all that data. When movie and broadcast editors consider their whole post-production process to determine their requirements, they will need hardware and software to handle the massive amounts of data in their 4K or 8K images. With 5th Gen i7 processors, you have the hardware to handle RAW. Currently, Intel has teams working on the software issues that go with this new technology to make their editing even better.

More on the 5th Gen processor:
5th Gen Intel Core Factsheet

This is supposed to be a poetry column? What does all this have to do with poetry? Photography and film-making are closer to poetry than any other form of writing. Poetry, photography and film-making are all predicated on capturing the moment. For a nanotechnology audience, what better way to express the future of capturing images artistically than to report on a nanotechnology device that is furthering art and industry?

My blog can be seen at zongrik blog

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