Home · Register · Join Upload & Sell

Moderated by: Fred Miranda
Username  

  New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site
  New Feature: SMS Notification alert
  New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist
  

FM Forums | Sony Forum | Join Upload & Sell

1
       2       end
  

Archive 2021 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha ...

  
 
TopPixel
Offline
• •
[X]
p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle

Someone said I complained too much so I decided to do some technical research into CF Express vs UHS-ii SD card power consumption to understand why Sony made the choice of CF Express Type A + UHS-ii SD cards it did for the Alpha 1. Now that I have a deeper understanding of the magnitude of CF Express Type B power consumption, I can understand why Sony made the choice of going with CF Express Type A instead of CF Express Type B. The Sony Alpha 1 may also be a power consumption miracle if the 4.6 watts operational in the Sony specifications website is true with a CF Express Type A card. (Hint: I'm APPRECIATING Sony here, not complaining)

First, how much power does a UHS-ii sd card use when writing data? This establishes a power consumption baseline that we will use to compare with CF Express. We want to know both the nominal power consumption in watts when writing out as well as the the power consumption in the idle/sleep states since these are the two power levels that define how much battery life we can get out of a camera battery.

From a Flash Memory Summit presentation, linked to below, on UHS-ii, we see on the "UHS-ii is saving energy" page that the UHS-ii sd card they measured uses an average of 0.79 watts when writing a multi gigabyte burst at 242 MB/s. The idle/sleep state power consumption is 0.2 mW (0.0002 W).

https://www.flashmemorysummit.com/English/Collaterals/Proceedings/2015/20150813_FL31_Pinto.pdf

For CF Express Type B cards that are used in Canon and Nikon cameras, I was able to find a spec sheet for Delkin and for ProGrade that lists power consumption numbers. These spec sheets are linked below. This is where things get interesting.

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/2815914.pdf

https://progradedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ProGrade_DS_CFexpress_Final_E.pdf


On page 15 of the spec sheet for the Delkin CF Express Type B cards, we find Table 4-2 that lists the average power consumption for their 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB Type B cards that are rated for 1000 MB/sec write. These cards require an average of 1.8, 2.3, and 2.5 watts respectively for writing out. Right here, this means that using a higher capacity CF Express cards results in significantly higher power consumption and these are not small power numbers at all for a battery powered device!!!

The UHS-ii sd card earlier in this rant used only 0.79 watts. The Delkin CF Express Type B cards use 2.27 - 3.16x as much power writing out compared to UHS-ii! This is an enormous difference for a battery powered device.

On page 16 of the Delkin spec sheet, we find it lists two sleep states for its CF Express Type B cards, PS3 at 30 mW and PS4 at 2 mW. Notice that even just idling or sleeping, these CF Express cards use an order of magnitude or more in power compared to the 0.2 mW of a UHS-ii sd card we showed earlier!!! No wonder battery life suffers when using CF Express cards, they are indeed power hogs compared to UHS-ii.

Things get even more interesting when we look at the ProGrade CF Express Type B spec sheet linked to above for their Gold and Cobalt cards ranging from 120 GB to 1 TB capacities. In it, we find it states a PS4 sleep power of 2 mW, same as the Delkin. Then, we also see it list the nominal 3.3 V of a Type B card and it shows a normal operating current of 1550 mA and a max of 2500 mA. This means a ProGrade Type B card uses 5.12 watts normally and up to 8.25 watts max! Those are enormous power consumption numbers for a camera and much worse than the Delkin let alone what UHS-ii uses!!! The ProGrade cards use 6.5x as much power as a UHS-ii card in operation!!! Now imagine if you were to use dual CF Express Type B slots, the power consumption gets unwieldy.

And with the burst shooting speed we expect out of our modern cameras, I surmise that the CF Express memory cards don't get much chance to go into the sleep states but rather stay in their average power consumption states in the 1.8, 2.3, 2.5, 5.12 watt, etc ranges we showed above. And from the Delkin spec sheet, we also see the power consumption when reading the CF Express card is significantly higher than the write power! It shows that read power is 20-40% higher than the already enormous write powers! That is just not acceptable.

This explains why everyone says CF Express cards are very hot when they pop them out of the Canon R5 or their card reader hooked up to their computer. These whole digit watt power numbers are enormous for a memory card. It also explains why there is such a heat issue and low battery life on the Canon R5. A CF Express card can easily use a majority of the power of the camera. It also goes a way to explain why the mechanical shutter on the R5 can't do high fps as the battery drains. It's because Canon needs to reserve a large portion of the power available for the CF Express and doesn't have much headroom. There is no way Canon could have put two CF Express Type B slots on the R5 with the battery it has and why only the 1DXiii has two (because of the enormous 1DXiii body). This extremely high power consumption by Type B cards could also explain some of the random camera freezing Canon R5 users are seeing that require a hard reset, the peak power consumption of some Type B cards are simply too high for the battery when doing bursts.

So why did I say the Sony Alpha 1 may be a power consumption miracle in the title of this thread? It's because there are TWO CF Express Type A slots on the Alpha 1 and the Sony site claims a nominal power usage of only 4.6 watts for the whole camera when it is taking a photo! Whether Sony measured this power number using the CF Express Type A slots or the UHS-ii slots on the Alpha 1 is unclear. I am hoping this number is done with the CF Express Type A slot because that would make the Alpha 1 an extremely power efficient camera and using the UHS-ii slots would greatly extend the already class leading mirrorless battery life. Maybe I won't need all 8 of the Sony FZ100 batteries I thought I would need for all day sports shooting after Sony disabled 3rd party FZ100 batteries on the Alpha 1. Maybe I can use the UHS-ii slots to save battery life.

This also goes to explain why Sony chose the CF Express Type A slot instead of Type B. The Type A cards only use 1 PCIe 3.0 data lane whereas the Type B uses 2 PCIe 3.0 lanes. This means the Type A cards can use a fraction of the power of the Type B cards since there is less circuitry to power in the cards. Sony doesn't list power numbers for it's Type A cards like Delkin and ProGrade does but I am very interested to see if anyone can pull these Sony numbers from somewhere.

https://www.sony.com/electronics/interchangeable-lens-cameras/ilce-1/specifications



Feb 01, 2021 at 04:11 AM
kimknapp
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Based on Tony Northrup’s testing, it appears that the A version must be using significantly less power than the B version.
Nice find TopPixel.



Feb 01, 2021 at 08:36 AM
TheEmrys
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Can you just do one thread?


Feb 01, 2021 at 08:38 AM
ShootPDX
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Thanks foe the info. I still don’t fully understand the need to make a new thread each time you have an opinion about a single camera. You could just, you know, write your own thoughts in a single thread like everyone else reviewing the camera has done.


Feb 01, 2021 at 11:20 AM
Chaliel
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Very interesting a worth a new thread!
It's very hard to find this kind of info when it's drowned in one of those long threads.



Feb 01, 2021 at 12:48 PM
Beni
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Attention seeker.


Feb 01, 2021 at 01:20 PM
TopPixel
Offline
• •
[X]
p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Beni wrote:
Attention seeker.


What happened to all those people on here accusing me of being some Nikon dude they were fighting with in the past. And where are those posters in the other threads that claim I'm being paid by Canon to badmouth Sony? Now it's just "Attention seeker"? I would have thought you conspiracy guys would be accusing me of pushing 5G from the government by now.



Feb 01, 2021 at 01:32 PM
Beni
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


I think you may realise as you mature that most forums have a certain norm and conduct of behaviour. It is polite to learn a forums 'style' before participating and is considered extremely rude for a newcomer to be brash and rude about breaking said unwritten rules of behaviour.

To put it in a nutshell you are not impressing anyone. I would suggest shutting up and re-joining the conversations when you're willing to do so in the fashion of the forum. Clickbait headlines, starting multiple concurrent threads, aggressive replies, trash talk, etc are not the norm or applauded here.



Feb 01, 2021 at 01:43 PM
SoundHound
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Regardless of protocols this is very valuable information which deserves it’s own unique thread. Thank you very much!


Feb 01, 2021 at 02:55 PM
Jesse Evans
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


I replied in another thread to this info as well. But I'll leave it here too:


From a Flash Memory Summit presentation, linked to below, on UHS-ii, we see on the "UHS-ii is saving energy" page that the UHS-ii sd card they measured uses an average of 0.79 watts when writing a multi gigabyte burst at 242 MB/s.
...

lists the average power consumption for their 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB Type B cards that are rated for 1000 MB/sec write.

...

The UHS-ii sd card earlier in this rant used only 0.79 watts. The Delkin CF Express Type B cards use 2.27 - 3.16x as much power writing out compared to UHS-ii! This is an enormous difference for a battery powered
...Show more

As with all other costly lunches, you can see that the performance at write time scales roughly linearly, and the CFExpress Type B cards offer higher performance per transfer speed over SD. This makes sense since CFExpress uses NVMe rather than SATA, and NVMe is a more efficient protocol as it was developed specifically for flash storage.

1000MB/s is 4.13x the speed achieved by the UHS-II card, and in the worst case you pay a 3.16x power penalty.

When comparing the CFExpress Type A and Type B cards, you can expect that the power usage will be dictated by the transfer rate, and not the form factor.

Yes, it will use less power, because you are transferring data more slowly.

If one were to software limit the transfer rates for a Type B card, you would likely see nearly the same power usage.



Feb 01, 2021 at 06:02 PM
TopPixel
Offline
• •
[X]
p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Jesse Evans wrote:
As with all other costly lunches, you can see that the performance at write time scales roughly linearly, and the CFExpress Type B cards offer higher performance per transfer speed over SD. This makes sense since CFExpress uses NVMe rather than SATA, and NVMe is a more efficient protocol as it was developed specifically for flash storage.

1000MB/s is 4.13x the speed achieved by the UHS-II card, and in the worst case you pay a 3.16x power penalty.

When comparing the CFExpress Type A and Type B cards, you can expect that the power usage will be dictated by the transfer
...Show more

Actually, I wrote in the original post that even the standby and sleep power of CF Express B is orders of magnitude higher than a UHS-ii sd card in standby/sleep, so it is not just about transfer rate.

And from what people report about excessively hot CF Express B cards coming out of the Canon R5 not even writing to it and from users with CF Express B card readers just having the card inserted report very hot cards. This means the CF Express cards are not even going into the P3 and P4 standby and sleep states that would be measured in mW instead of multiple watts. The CF Express B cards on the market are consuming multiple watts of power not even doing anything.

In theory, you *COULD* use less power in the CF Express format compared to UHS-ii for the same amount of data written since CF Express writes much faster so can go to standby/sleep much faster. But from what we see out in the real world with very hot CF Express cards, this is not happening consistently or maybe even at all, resulting in constant high power usage. The infamous very hot CF Express B cards out of the Canon R5 doing nothing from the 8K testing debacle shows this. It may not even be possible to put CF Express B cards reliably into and out of the standby P3 and P4 states in time for burst shots and might be why Canon has the CF Express running full power all the time.

Also, I see no mention of reduced transfer rate modes in the CF Express card specifications I linked to before. The Delkin one does show that is has thermal throttling safeguards but those only appear to be triggered when temperature limits are reached.

And if it's a pair of ProGrade CF Express B cards, they would be consuming over 10 watts in operation and bursting up to 16 watts combined. I don't think a Sony Alpha 1 body can handle this kind of heat without something melting or heating up the image sensor and cause thermal noise. Also, the FZ100 battery only has a 16.4 Wh capacity, slightly bigger than the Canon R5, so it's not like we have 95 Wh batteries from laptops where we can waste energy.

And that thermal noise, knowing now how much power CF Express B cards consume, I actually think it is not a good idea to use them in their curent state for a camera since our image sensors are so sensitive to noise generated by those conditions.

Edited on Feb 01, 2021 at 06:59 PM · View previous versions



Feb 01, 2021 at 06:24 PM
Jesse Evans
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


TopPixel wrote:
Actually, I wrote in the original post that even the standby and sleep power of CF Express B is orders of magnitude higher than a UHS-ii sd card in standby/sleep, so it is not just about transfer rate.

And from what people report about excessively hot CF Express B cards coming out of the Canon R5 not even writing to it and from users with CF Express B card readers just having the card inserted report very hot cards. This means the CF Express cards are not even going into the P3 and P4 standby and sleep states that would be
...Show more

Agree, you make a lot of good points.

My primary assertion is that there is no reason to believe that CFExpress Type A cards will have a materially different power usage pattern than CFExpress Type A with the exception of how fast they are written to.

However, it is also likely the case that Sony would put more effort in to toggling power modes than Canon, given their track records on various issues.

The point that standby power is much better with SD cards is an undeniable reality right now.



Feb 01, 2021 at 06:38 PM
kosin
Online
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


SoundHound wrote:
Regardless of protocols this is very valuable information which deserves it’s own unique thread. Thank you very much!


+1
I totally agree as this information would get easily buried in his previous threads.

I wonder if the reason that Sony continues to use low resolution LCDs is also somewhat related to "saving" battery power?



Feb 01, 2021 at 06:38 PM
TopPixel
Offline
• •
[X]
p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Jesse Evans wrote:
Agree, you make a lot of good points.

My primary assertion is that there is no reason to believe that CFExpress Type A cards will have a materially different power usage pattern than CFExpress Type A with the exception of how fast they are written to.

However, it is also likely the case that Sony would put more effort in to toggling power modes than Canon, given their track records on various issues.

The point that standby power is much better with SD cards is an undeniable reality right now.


I'm hoping that by using CFExpress A, that Sony was able to reduce memory card power consumption by half simply by using 1 PCIe lane instead of 2 in the B format.

And speaking of Sony, I found that a company called Nextorage actually makes the CFExpress A cards that Sony sells under their own name, but there is no detailed specifications sheet:

https://www.nextorage.net/english/news/20200729.html

https://www.nextorage.net/english/product/cf_memory/

It looks like Nextorage is wholly owned by Sony and Sony created it specifically for memory cards:

About Us
Nextorage Corporation was established on October 1, 2019 as a new Sony group company specializing in the memory storage solutions business.
We are a new company led by engineers and staff who build on 20 years of history in memory storage at Sony.
We created a framework for continuing to provide products of the highest performance with peace of mind, fully leveraging our memory controller technology, highly durable product design, manufacturing infrastructure, and memory purchasing capacity.

https://www.nextorage.net/english/company/



Feb 01, 2021 at 06:49 PM
TopPixel
Offline
• •
[X]
p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


kosin wrote:
+1
I totally agree as this information would get easily buried in his previous threads.

I wonder if the reason that Sony continues to use low resolution LCDs is also somewhat related to "saving" battery power?


I think Sony just cheaped out on the LCD simply because it is cheaper. The Alpha 1 EVF consumes more power than the LCD does.



Feb 01, 2021 at 07:01 PM
Jesse Evans
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


TopPixel wrote:
I'm hoping that by using CFExpress A, that Sony was able to reduce memory card power consumption by half simply by using 1 PCIe lane instead of 2 in the B format.

And speaking of Sony, I found that a company called Nextorage actually makes the CFExpress A cards that Sony sells under their own name, but there is no detailed specifications sheet:

https://www.nextorage.net/english/news/20200729.html

https://www.nextorage.net/english/product/cf_memory/

It looks like Nextorage is wholly owned by Sony and Sony created it specifically for memory cards:

About Us
Nextorage Corporation was established on October 1, 2019 as a new Sony group company specializing in the memory storage solutions business.
We are
...Show more

Yeah, I don't think they will be cutting their standby power usage in half by reducing a PCIE lane. They may have if the controller that is wired to that lane is much more efficient than the one they're using in the type B cards. Time will tell I suppose. I also have not been able to find a single power spec for a type A card yet :-)



Feb 01, 2021 at 07:03 PM
TopPixel
Offline
• •
[X]
p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Jesse Evans wrote:
Yeah, I don't think they will be cutting their standby power usage in half by reducing a PCIE lane. They may have if the controller that is wired to that lane is much more efficient than the one they're using in the type B cards. Time will tell I suppose. I also have not been able to find a single power spec for a type A card yet :-)


Might be something to ask on one of those Sony Q&A sessions with a Sony rep.

Found another brand of CFExpress B cards that list power consumption, this time from Angelbird for their 1000 MB/sec sustained cards:

POWER USAGE Sleep: <50 mW
Idle: 0.45 W
Max: 2.40 W

https://www.angelbird.com/prod/av-pro-cfexpress-2546/

It doesn't give much specifics like Delkin does but that 2.40 W max power is not bad if it is true and for their 1 TB or 2 TB capacity cards. That idle and sleep power seems terrible, though. I think that 2.40 W max power is likely only for the Angelbird 512 GB and lower cards since the higher capacity you go, the higher the power consumption because of more memory chips like we saw in the Delkin specs.

Edited on Feb 01, 2021 at 07:23 PM · View previous versions



Feb 01, 2021 at 07:08 PM
snapsy
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle



Nice work on the research and post. A few select notes below...

TopPixel wrote:
From a Flash Memory Summit presentation, linked to below, on UHS-ii, we see on the "UHS-ii is saving energy" page that the UHS-ii sd card they measured uses an average of 0.79 watts when writing a multi gigabyte burst at 242 MB/s. The idle/sleep state power consumption is 0.2 mW (0.0002 W).
...
On page 15 of the spec sheet for the Delkin CF Express Type B cards, we find Table 4-2 that lists the average power consumption for their 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB Type B cards that are rated for 1000 MB/sec write. These cards require an average of 1.8, 2.3,
...Show more

The CFE cards are rated at approximately 3x the speed of the UHS-II cards. Provided the camera can sustain that bandwidth this means the CFE cards will spend 1/3 of their time actively writing vs UHS-II cards for a given workload, so if we divide the above CFE write power consumption numbers by three their write power consumption is approximately the same as the UHS-II cards.

TopPixel wrote:
On page 16 of the Delkin spec sheet, we find it lists two sleep states for its CF Express Type B cards, PS3 at 30 mW and PS4 at 2 mW. Notice that even just idling or sleeping, these CF Express cards use an order of magnitude or more in power compared to the 0.2 mW of a UHS-ii sd card we showed earlier!!! No wonder battery life suffers when using CF Express cards, they are indeed power hogs compared to UHS-ii.


True, though I'm guessing that will represent a fraction of the the idle power consumption an MILC uses while sitting idle in Live View.

TopPixel wrote:
This extremely high power consumption by Type B cards could also explain some of the random camera freezing Canon R5 users are seeing that require a hard reset, the peak power consumption of some Type B cards are simply too high for the battery when doing bursts.


The freezing is likely the firmware hanging up, as evidence by requiring a battery-pull to recover. This isn't all that uncommon with new-generation Canon cameras - firmware bug fixes typically resolve those issues.



Feb 01, 2021 at 07:20 PM
AdaptedLenses
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


Generally agree, good points both ways but was thinking about speed / power consumption. And NVMe based was a good note as NVMe drives are also notorious for getting hot, so not sure it’s fair to equate hot with abnormal consumption. Otherwise the final point seems to be based on a. Hope that the A1’s 4.6 figure is CFA, but marketing apec sheets should have taught us by now that’s going to be an optimal number, meaning the lowest the camera is likely to run, probably not CFA, but rather SD.

As a random aside, I’m now primarily a Nikon shooter, Z6, Z5 and Z6II, though I still have a couple Sony’s and have shot them for years. Out of the gate, Nikon seemed to be doing a much better job of power management, even with CIPA numbers that rivaled the older NP-FW50 batteries, and despite using XQD rather than UHS-I SD cards in the MKII Sony’s. Speculation but leads me to believe the write / sleep consumption of the cards isnt the primary driver of battery waste. Jim Kasson would be a good one to discuss this topic further with.

Jesse Evans wrote:
Agree, you make a lot of good points.

My primary assertion is that there is no reason to believe that CFExpress Type A cards will have a materially different power usage pattern than CFExpress Type A with the exception of how fast they are written to.

However, it is also likely the case that Sony would put more effort in to toggling power modes than Canon, given their track records on various issues.

The point that standby power is much better with SD cards is an undeniable reality right now.




Feb 01, 2021 at 07:41 PM
kosin
Online
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · A Technical Look at CF Express Power Consumption and Why the Sony Alpha 1 May Be a Power Miracle


TopPixel wrote:
I think Sony just cheaped out on the LCD simply because it is cheaper. The Alpha 1 EVF consumes more power than the LCD does.


But higher resolution LCD would drain more power than 2 SD UHS-II cards...



Feb 01, 2021 at 09:08 PM
1
       2       end




FM Forums | Sony Forum | Join Upload & Sell

1
       2       end
    
 

You are not logged in. Login or Register

Username       Or Reset password



This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.