fjablo wrote:
What I meant was differences between different chips that Nikon calls "Expeed 7". Almost certain that there are differences from camera to camera (chip in the Z9 is not the same one used in the Z50II, despite both being called Expeed 7)
Not sure I buy that there are different Exceed 7 ASICs. It wouldn’t make economic sense to have multiple variations of the Exceed 7. That’s too costly to redesign multiple versions of the ASIC, testing multiple versions, stocking, etc. It would be better to have one ASIC and make changes to the peripherals. I do think the Exceed 6 and Exceed 7 are different ASICs.
Why do you feel the Exceed 7 in the Z9 is different than in the Z8, Zf, Z6III, Z50II?
story_teller wrote:
Not sure I buy that there are different Exceed 7 ASICs. It wouldn’t make economic sense to have multiple variations of the Exceed 7. That’s too costly to redesign multiple versions of the ASIC, testing multiple versions, stocking, etc. It would be better to have one ASIC and make changes to the peripherals. I do think the Exceed 6 and Exceed 7 are different ASICs.
Why do you feel the Exceed 7 in the Z9 is different than in the Z8, Zf, Z6III, Z50II?
I'm not talking about a redesign. Could be the same chip design / layout but at different clock speeds. The Z50II doesn't need a chip as fast as a Z9 and gets hotter more easily - would make sense to let the chip run at lower clock speeds and lower voltage.
Theoretically they could also use partially deactivated chips in some models which effectively increases yield in chip production. Not sure if this is done with ASICs but AMD and Intel have both used this approach with CPUs in the past. It's called "binning".
fjablo wrote:
I'm not talking about a redesign. Could be the same chip design / layout but at different clock speeds. The Z50II doesn't need a chip as fast as a Z9 and gets hotter more easily - would make sense to let the chip run at lower clock speeds and lower voltage.
Theoretically they could also use partially deactivated chips in some models which effectively increases yield in chip production. Not sure if this is done with ASICs but AMD and Intel have both used this approach with CPUs in the past. It's called "binning".
I would agree with what you’re saying. They also used to use different types of binning to find Military Grade components.
I'm pretty sure the Expeed chip isn't the only thing governing image review speed. I've always found the D800, which runs a 65-nanometer Expeed 3 processor, to be very quick on image playback, at least with regard to zooming focus check. One reason I never updated to the Expeed 4 equipped D810 is that despite the faster processor, it was clearly slower on this, and annoyingly so, given the my visceral need to chimp focus accuracy that dates from past bad experiences with crop sensor cameras with AF mirror alignment problems.
What Expeed really does is improve image processing, everything from noise reduction to card-write speeds to video bandwidth. And with Expeed 7 that seemed to be the juice Nikon needed to thoroughly and quickly process and act upon all the autofocus data coming from their imaging sensors in mirrorless.
