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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

How about a Thunderbolt version of the RED Rocket?

Peter Franzen said:
"A Thunderbolt connector is capable of providing two full-duplex channels. Each channel provides bi-directional 10 Gbps of bandwidth."

And

"Because Thunderbolt technology delivers two full-bandwidth channels, the user can realize high bandwidth on not only the first device attached, but on downstream devices as well."
Click to expand...

Just noticed this killer little fact myself. 20Gbps bidirectional is a whole lot of bandwidth.
 
yes but you need to have the whole "in computer" pipeline ready for that mass of data at that speed, right? Or am I missing something?
 
Really wishing we could combine those two channels into a single PCI Express 8x card for full rocket power (Intel guys confirmed you can't). Still I haven't seen the Mobile Rocket in action to know how well it copes as is, I might be happy with it running on 4x PCI Express speed and using the other channel for raids & multi backups & other IO. I think were gonna need all that bandwidth with the EPIC.


Also anyone else spotted this: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380890,00.asp

4K being displayed and served up from a raid over a single Thunderbolt connection and apparently on a 4K Apple Cinema Display. All pretty mind blowing and I hope the 4K Apple Cinema Display bit wasn't a mistake on the journalists part!
 
There was also something mentioned about being able to use thunderbolt as method of connecting two computers together and sharing files (with software support). I'm wondering about the future of NAS and whether in the long run you could simply have a fast RAID attached to multiple computers in a chain (if they had more than 1 Thunderbolt port I assume though there may be a way of splitting off) and make a poor mans NAS equivalent that way?
It may not be ideal but it might be a way of joining a DIT station, raid storage and edit station on set to work off shared media without the big expense of NAS hardware?
Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree here, I've only just begun learning about NAS, and I'm sure the way it presents file systems as natively mounted disks will always be a unique advantage. I'm sure the ever knowledgable Jeff Kilgroe can fill in the blanks...
 
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  • #26
Better specs from Intel are out now. Two 10Gbps channels in a Thunderbolt port. Each channel is uni-directional. So you can have 10Gbps bi-directional, or 20Gbps uni-directional. That clarifies a lot of the questions people are asking about the bandwidth.

I'm really wishing they would have put two TB ports on the 15" and 17" MBP. I bet they will in the next revision once more peripherals are out. Not going to complain, though. 10Gbps bidirectional I/O from a single inexpensive port is frickin' insane.

Oh, as for the PCIe TB adapters, there's some confusion there. Yes, there will likely be TB PCIe cards in the future. Or at least there is nothing stopping third parties from producing them. I would look toward video card makers and the like for many of the first offerings, since the connection is bundled within a mini-displayport connector and can transport displayport video signaling.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Better specs from Intel are out now. Two 10Gbps channels in a Thunderbolt port. Each channel is uni-directional. So you can have 10Gbps bi-directional, or 20Gbps uni-directional. That clarifies a lot of the questions people are asking about the bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Are you sure? The techpaper says:
"Each channel provides bi-directional 10 Gbps of bandwidth."
-> http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/325136-001US_secured.pdf

and the LaCie diagram shows the same:
http://www.lacie.com/us/technologies/technology.htm?id=10039

To me that says 40 Gbit/s total bandwith.
 
Robert Niessner said:
Are you sure? The techpaper says:
"Each channel provides bi-directional 10 Gbps of bandwidth."
-> http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/325136-001US_secured.pdf

and the LaCie diagram shows the same:
http://www.lacie.com/us/technologies/technology.htm?id=10039

To me that says 40 Gbit/s total bandwith.
Click to expand...

AnandTech is showing the same two lanes, bidirectional @ 10Gb = 40Gb

"Thunderbolt is dual-channel, with each channel supporting 10 Gbps of bidirectional bandwidth. That’s a potential 20 Gbps of upstream and 20 Gbps of downstream bandwidth."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4194/intels-codename-lightpeak-launches-as-thunderbolt

Although it remains to be seen if that is bondable.
 
Sean Rawls said:
Anyways, +1 for a Red SSD reader with Thunderbolt. They did say those interface modules would be interchangeable . . .
Click to expand...

+2 for this- that would be awesome off load speeds!
 
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  • #30
Robert Niessner said:
Are you sure? The techpaper says:
"Each channel provides bi-directional 10 Gbps of bandwidth."
-> http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/325136-001US_secured.pdf
Click to expand...

Yep, 2 x 10Gbit channels, bi-directional. That's what I thought at first and was hoping for, but second guessed myself after I got some bad info elsewhere in all my digging. Amazing what pops up out there and claims to be "official" info.

To me that says 40 Gbit/s total bandwith.
Click to expand...

Careful with that. ;) No other bi-directional connection out there advertises bandwidth based on aggregate numbers, lest 1000 computer geeks shall strike them down. Bi-directional is just that, full bandwidth in both directions. You can't call it 40Gbit as that would imply that you could actually send 40Gbits/second of information from one end of the data pipe to the other.


As for the SSD reader thing. +1111 for that. Only catch is that we will still be limited by the interface speed on the SSD's, which is SATA. I don't know if RED gave the SSD's a 3Gbps or 6Gbps interface. I know that RED Station modules are currently 3Gbps on their eSATA ports, hopefully the SSD's are faster. If their 3Gbps, that's fine... We can offload more than one at a time with bandwidth to spare. :)
 
@ Jon
That's because USB3.0 is too slow for such a use case.
USB3.0 has a theoretical transfer speed of 5 Gbit/s (= 640 MByte/s), but the interface carries a lot of overhead and maxes out at 3.2 Gbit/s (~410 MByte/s). Intel does not directly support USB3.0 within their chipsets and most of the third party's USB3.0 controllers do not deliver much more than 200 MByte/s currently.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Yep, 2 x 10Gbit channels, bi-directional. That's what I thought at first and was hoping for, but second guessed myself after I got some bad info elsewhere in all my digging. Amazing what pops up out there and claims to be "official" info.
Click to expand...

What I understand from my reading is that on the MBP, there are two data pipes: one for an DisplayPort signal for external screen and the other as a bidirectional PCI-Express x4 port.

I haven't read anything about the possibility of configuring the port as either dual DisplayPort or dual PCI-Express x4 port (as far as the MBP is concerned).

But I totally agree that an enclosed RedRocket device with HD-SDI out and passthrough port for the 2nd display would be great.
 
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  • #35
There is a lot of confusion out there and incomplete info because Thunderbolt was launched without all the specifics being available. You can get most of the details now from Intel. It's 2x10Gbit bi-directional channels. It's a PCI Express topology, so it's easy to extend with whatever protocols or devices you wish to attach to it. The spec supports DisplayPort signaling over the host interface and is a required function of the spec. When DisplayPort is active, it occupies one of the two data channels it seems, whether it uses the full 10Gbps of that channel or not. So you can in fact have 2 x 10Gbit channels operating for general use PCIe bandwidth. Or you can have one such 10Gbit channel plus one DisplayPort channel or just two DisplayPort channels.

All that said, there's some reports floating around that the TB port on the new Macbook Pro systems is full-time locked as 1 displayport and 1 PCIe TB channel. Which also seems allowable in the TB spec. I hope that is not the case, but until we have more info and ways to test, all we can do is this academic speculation.

I will say one thing about the new MBP systems... They are FAAAAST!!! I bought a new 15" 2.3GHz w/8GB and it's showing anywhere from 2 to 3 X as fast for a lot of tasks compared to my late 2010 i7 17" MBP. When running Windows, the system is noticeably faster, to the order of 10% or more, than my Dell XPS notebook with the same CPU and RAM. Apple has tuned these systems very well... But that's another discussion.

I'm expecting to see every HDD and RAID company talking about Thunderbolt solutions at NAB. I know of some who have products in the works, but have not officially announced yet. I'm personally holding off of buying any new external storage products (as best I can) until the Thunderbolt products start shipping.
 
so are we actually going to be able to use thunderbolt alot with red rocket/?? or some sort of attachment with it?
 
REDRocket Module for Epic with a thunderbolt connectivity for when it isn't being used to create Pro-Res dailies onto a storage module connected to it... two birds with one stone?
When you arent using it on the camera it houses the redrocket for use or you can use it on the cam, its entirely up to you...

What I would love is for RED Station to get Thunderbolt
 
ThunderBolt will also be a nice improvement physically. The actual connection is way more solid than FW800 or eSata connector and has many more benefits. There are a ton of possibilities here, can't wait to see what companies like RED come up with.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
There is a lot of confusion out there and incomplete info because Thunderbolt was launched without all the specifics being available. You can get most of the details now from Intel. It's 2x10Gbit bi-directional channels. It's a PCI Express topology, so it's easy to extend with whatever protocols or devices you wish to attach to it. The spec supports DisplayPort signaling over the host interface and is a required function of the spec. When DisplayPort is active, it occupies one of the two data channels it seems, whether it uses the full 10Gbps of that channel or not. So you can in fact have 2 x 10Gbit channels operating for general use PCIe bandwidth. Or you can have one such 10Gbit channel plus one DisplayPort channel or just two DisplayPort channels.

All that said, there's some reports floating around that the TB port on the new Macbook Pro systems is full-time locked as 1 displayport and 1 PCIe TB channel. Which also seems allowable in the TB spec. I hope that is not the case, but until we have more info and ways to test, all we can do is this academic speculation.

I will say one thing about the new MBP systems... They are FAAAAST!!! I bought a new 15" 2.3GHz w/8GB and it's showing anywhere from 2 to 3 X as fast for a lot of tasks compared to my late 2010 i7 17" MBP. When running Windows, the system is noticeably faster, to the order of 10% or more, than my Dell XPS notebook with the same CPU and RAM. Apple has tuned these systems very well... But that's another discussion.

I'm expecting to see every HDD and RAID company talking about Thunderbolt solutions at NAB. I know of some who have products in the works, but have not officially announced yet. I'm personally holding off of buying any new external storage products (as best I can) until the Thunderbolt products start shipping.
Click to expand...

Hey Jeff,

Sounds like you would DEFINITELY recommend the new MBP's ... that's good to know, I very much trust your opinion. I have a late 2009 version with 3.06ghz, 8gb, 128gb ssd and it's pretty full and has gotten slow for certain things.

I'm thinking of upgrading to the new Thunderbolt version but a friend said they might release yet another MBP update later this year before Christmas with a thinner body??? Seems unlikely that they would do 2 releases in the same year .... but I think a body revision is due in one of the next couple releases.

Also, Jeff -- if I really wanted to go for the SSD option -- would you recommend getting the Apple version, or just replacing the standard drive with either a OWC or perhaps Hitachi drive when it becomes available.

Thanks for the impressions!

Anthony
 
Robert Niessner said:
@ Jon
That's because USB3.0 is too slow for such a use case.
USB3.0 has a theoretical transfer speed of 5 Gbit/s (= 640 MByte/s), but the interface carries a lot of overhead and maxes out at 3.2 Gbit/s (~410 MByte/s). Intel does not directly support USB3.0 within their chipsets and most of the third party's USB3.0 controllers do not deliver much more than 200 MByte/s currently.
Click to expand...

Damm... For sale 2x USB cards :-(
 
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