The a1 defintively does not have a global shutter though. And so I am curious how far they drop the bitrate to achieve 30 FPS and the incredibly low distortion they demonstrate in they launch video. Do you have the firgures for that by chance?
Also, purely talking about the latest consumer ILC, I don't have the impression there is all that much catching up to do anymore. The R5 has already demonstrated that Canon can do high resolution, high throughput imaging with very quick read out speeds now. With the R1, that can only improve.
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The 30 fps Burst Rate Stills bandwidth is usually a function of the DSP (Digital Signal Processor) and ADC/DAC (Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Analog Converter) chip speed which indicates how many gigasamples per second it can do and at what output bit-depth is creates.
For the Sony A-1, the full-frame 8640 x 5760 pixel 3:2 image frame requires 49,766,400 pixels with FOUR SAMPLES per RGBG Pixel (i.e. 4 separate Red, Green, Blue, Green photosites) which means 199,065,600 samples per frame or 5,971,968,000 samples per second at 20 bits wide initially and then sub-sampled down to 16, 14, 12, 10 and 8 bits per output RGBG channel sample.
YOU MUST be able to process an entire set of 30 frames UNCOMPRESSED during each second so you can then make a reasonable calculation on other parts of the system to see what sort of bandwidth is required. It really isn't all that exotic based upon what I am seeing.
With an 8-channel ADC/DAC/DSP chip set, it means at least 746.5 Megasamples per Second per channel since you are doing multiple instructions per second (i.e. 2 to 4 cpu ops per clock tick) on most BIONZ chips, so MY GUESS that it's PROBABLY a 1.5 GHz processor and probably costs Sony $150 USD to produce in-house or get from GlobalFoundries (aka AMD and IBM) under OEM/ODM outsourcing agreements! Based on the microcode I see, it's at least an ARM Cortex A5 quad-core CPU system. It might even be one of the Octo-core (i.e. 8 cores) designs as it is ABLE to do 30 fps!
Sony has ALWAYS been good on ADC/DAC/DSP chip design! I remember asking TI (Texas Instruments) for an ADC/DAC/DSP chip set for our high-orbit space cameras many years ago and they wanted $25,000 USD PER SET !!! A few days later I just went to Sony and asked for the 20-BIT ADC/DAC/DSP chip set used in one of their high end pro-level audio processors. It was $400 per chip set which means it was $24,600 USD CHEAPER AND it had better performance AND was a full 20 bits wide instead of 14 bits wide which meant HIGH QUALITY signal processing! We just repurposed multiple sets of the chips for ADC/DAC/DSP of 2.6K still photos and 1080p video!
I just stuck the chip sets in a tungsten shielded box along with a higher end Sony CCD sensor and UP it went! It's still there doing its thing 15 years later! Quality is STILL great for video and 2.6K stills. Lotsa "Fast Walkers" up there! Counted over 50 different planform types in crystal clear clarity over the years!
Now You Know!
V