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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?

If a Thunderbold Red Station would be availaibile do you guys think this would speed up copy from a RED SSD to a let's say RAID 5 ?
 
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That's what I was thinking too...Thx
 
if red would develop something like i posted in this thread would be even better :)
 
So the rocket would basically take up all the bandwidth of a Thunderbolt port, but that would be if it were in an x16 enclosure, right? the magma has two x8's and the sonnet is x4, so at most in the magma the rocket would still be running at half it's possible capacity. I suppose in the current MPB setup, that would probably be enough for most people, and then you could also daisy chain in a display, or add an esata pcie card in the magma.

A MPB with two thunderbolt ports would be sick, then you could theoretically have the rocket dedicated to one port (in some not-yet-existing x16 enclosure), then have the other one for your storage and thunderbolt enabled SSD red station. I guess in the imacs case they already have this. if they kill off the mac pro could that not eventually become the standard? :0
 
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Max M. said:
if red would develop something like i posted in this thread would be even better :)
Click to expand...

That's basically what we were talking about here... Unless you also want additional I/O functionality and ability to work with other formats. Not sure how into that RED would be, but hey, can always ask. ;)


Andrew Wilsak said:
So the rocket would basically take up all the bandwidth of a Thunderbolt port, but that would be if it were in an x16 enclosure, right?
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt in its current form has two 10Gbps bi-directional data channels in each port, for an aggregate 20Gbps. It is essentially the equivalent of a PCIe v2.0 X4 slot. In fact, a Thunderbolt header when attached to the PCIe bridge, occupies 4 lanes. ...So only 1/4 the bandwidth of an X16 slot, which is 80Gbps.

The RED Rocket is a PCIe gen1 X8 device. At full bandwidth, it would saturate a Thunderbolt port. Most of the time, the Rocket is not going to be running at full bandwidth. We can realistically get away with it running less. Many of the various PCIe expanders coming up for Thunderbolt, like the Magma, have multiple slots. This allows for better options in configuring various devices or having the ability to run multiple devices, even at the same time. But you still only have 20Gbps total bandwidth on a Thunderbolt port. Additionally, you also have to be careful, several of the expanders coming out only use a single channel and are actually capable of using only 10Gbps from a Thunderbolt port. This would let you sustain a RED Rocket at half its maximum bandwidth, which is plenty in most cases, and still attach a storage device like a Promise Thunderbolt RAID (which also uses only one channel) or a Thunderbolt display.

if they kill off the mac pro could that not eventually become the standard? :0
Click to expand...

I think it unlikely that they will kill the Mac Pro. However, the Mac Pro as it currently exists, is in dire need of an overhaul. There is no doubt the next Mac Pro system will have a couple Thunderbolt ports. However, Thunderbolt is not a true replacement for the higher performance PCIe slots, let alone the latest PCIe v3.0. I'm expecting the next major revision of the Mac Pro to give us a sleeker, rack-mountable system with the ability to install more internal storage devices (2.5"), but will probably offer fewer expansion slots. If I had to bet on it, I'd say we'd get 3 slots -- One PCIe v2.1 X16 and two PCIe v3.0 X16.

Of course that's speculation. We won't know until Apple announces. And with the current situation on Intel's workstation/server class chipsets, it's going to be sometime next year. Or so it looks.
 
Hmmm, I've seen that it's most beneficial to have the rocket in an x16 slot in the mac pro, but if it's an x8 device, what is the theoretical maximum bandwidth the rocket could use? and what requires the most, playback or transcoding?

I guess the real heart of my questioning is this: Say I have the rocket in the magma or similar x8 enclosure-how does the performance compare to having it in the mac pro? Could I still have storage daisy chained through the enclosure and expect reasonably good performance?
 
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Andrew Wilsak said:
Hmmm, I've seen that it's most beneficial to have the rocket in an x16 slot in the mac pro, but if it's an x8 device, what is the theoretical maximum bandwidth the rocket could use? and what requires the most, playback or transcoding?
Click to expand...

Rocket is a v1 X8 card. So it will only use 1/4 of the bandwidth of a v2 X16 slot. You have to put it in an X8 or X16 slot to get full bandwidth out of the card. Even though a v2 X4 slot has the capability of the same amount of throughput as a v1 X8 slot, bandwidth is supplied by lanes, so in a gen2 X4 slot, the Rocket's maximum throughput is cut in half. In a system like the Mac Pro, where we have two X16 slots and two X4 slots, it is most beneficial to put the Rocket in the X16 slot.

I guess the real heart of my questioning is this: Say I have the rocket in the magma or similar x8 enclosure-how does the performance compare to having it in the mac pro? Could I still have storage daisy chained through the enclosure and expect reasonably good performance?
Click to expand...

The Magma ExpressBox 3T uses a single 10Gbps Thunderbolt channel. It doesn't really matter that it has two X8 and one X4 slots inside the box, since any one of those slots can saturate the one Thunderbolt channel. The ExpressBox has a pass-through, so you can use that second Thunderbolt channel to connect a RAID or another display. If you put the Rocket in this enclosure, it will essentially run at half the speed of having it in the Mac Pro -- it's going to top out at 10Gbps, which is half of what a v1 X8 slot is capable of. Thunderbolt is a PCIe topology, but due to the external cabling and transitional interface with active electronics, yadda, yadda.. it has more latency than if you were to plug the card right into a real PCIe slot in your system. If you daisy-chain additional Thunderbolt devices one or both channels will have to be shared amongst other devices. If there is a display, then the second channel is automatically dedicated to the display only.

Installing additional cards in the Magma, they will have to share in the available 10Gbps bandwidth. If you use the Rocket and have another card in there, but it's sitting idle, it won't really interfere.

The Rocket running at half-speed isn't going to be a big deal in most cases. 10Gbps over PCIe / Thunderbolt equates to roughly 950MB/s. Uncompressed de-bayered 4K 16:9 16bit (Epic footage) at 30fps requires 540MB/s to return to the system. In most situations, the Rocket, even installed where at runs half speed, is not going to be a bottleneck.
 
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