Magma ExpressBox 3T or Sonnet Echo Express Pro Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis

[Johnny Friday]

the only downer on the LaCie esata Hub is that they are only 3gb connections....My new express 34 card with Sonnet and two Esata ports is 6gb connection....The LaCie would be a great option if they just made it 6gb/sec---so in reality i just don't see a big advantage of this product over the express card. Size in this case to me matters....and not taking up bandwidth on the T-bolt side of things....and having it on the express slot seems better distributed.

 

[Kwan Khan]

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossd.html .

Once this available.. put two 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD ... + Sonnet EE Pro with RR = best option for now

 

[Mike Halper]

the only downer on the LaCie esata Hub is that they are only 3gb connections....My new express 34 card with Sonnet and two Esata ports is 6gb connection....The LaCie would be a great option if they just made it 6gb/sec---so in reality i just don't see a big advantage of this product over the express card. Size in this case to me matters....and not taking up bandwidth on the T-bolt side of things....and having it on the express slot seems better distributed.

Yes, but if you're using the Rocket and a 6Gb eSATA controller you're not going to get 6Gb speeds anyway since one Rocket will use up a lot of the 10Gb bandwidth of Thunderbolt as it is. Plus even if I'm only transferring data (no Rocket), I typically need 3 or 4 eSATA ports so I have 2 eSATA hubs which totals 12Gb on their own (3Gb x 4), so 6Gb ports would rarely be taken advantage of anyway. Now if you have 2 Thunderbolt ports it could be different, but I still think there'd be less performance different realized than you may think when transferring data between multiple drives.

 

[Jean Bernard]

On the magma box, since the TB ports are on a full size slot bracket, I drilled and mounted the HD-SDI connections for the red rocket on the upper half of the TB pci-e bracket, plenty of room on the bracket, and it's recessed so the BNC ports don't get caught on anything.

Got any pictures of this mod Shiblon?

 

[Jean Bernard]

Thanks for the info Maryem. Are you able to transcode and transfer/backup at the same time without any speed drain? Can you benchmark a test if you have the time please? If power is no issue and if I can find the best card wether Cuda or Quadra I think I will go magma, in fact... I just got on the reserve list. I would like to get some thoughts on Power as well so I don't have to do an expensive experiment. I am sure someone on here has this Cuda/RR/ESata-USB3 setup on Magma and able to chime in. Or can we invite both Magma & Sonnet to shade some lights?

The mini route was just an after though as it seem to be limited to how many slots/size and and all accessories one must add on but I am curious to any comparison.

I am also gearing up for the year of the dragon and SSD/Thunder as well and need to be armed and ready.

Thanks for the insights.

To answer your original question, JB -

I have the Sonnet box, and it's pretty fast...I'm pretty happy with its performance. I used it for the first time on the Audi shoot, and transcodes (in 4K HD) were about 1.5x real time. (This is my guesstimate - I don't have hard benchmarks - but they felt fast!)

If I understand what I have read about Sonnet v. Magma correctly, then Thunderbolt is a bottleneck which doesn't permit a level of throughput beyond what is possible with the x4 lane, so right now, the Magma v. Sonnet debate is a moot point, though down the road, when we have faster Thunderbolt, then the Magma is the speedier choice. There are no published comparisons between these boxes currently, so it is all a bit of theory and speculation.

I'm thinking about what to put in my second lane on the Sonnet chassis and am torn between an esata card, so I can use my old RAID and spending up a bit so that I can use SSD storage - not just for storage but the transfer speeds are truly unbelievable. I had an external 240gb SSD plugged into Thunderbolt for fast transfers on Audi - and it was a huge boost in being to get cards cleaned and back in the field, especially with those long event-driven takes. Sonnet has this SSD/PCi-e card which seems almost ideal: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossd.html - a pair of 240gb SSD cards and a Rocket, and you will have a souped-up transfer/transcode/storage station.

However, the jury on the use of Nvidia/CUDA accelerated cards, such as you would use to optimize Resolve or Premiere is still out: there is no clear answer to this question, as far as I can tell. One reduser posted that the Quadra 4000 card for Mac was working but provided no detail, so the report was unconfirmed, and other users chimed in to say that the power draw for these cards isn't there, on the chassis. These cards are not yet listed on the Sonnet compatability chart, so unless someone provides a clear report, we really don't know for sure. The best we have right now is conflicting reports.

YMMV, with the Magma box, though same rule on the power draw may be cautionary.

We could all use some more user confirmation on the use of CUDA cards in these boxes. Lots of speculation, few data points, right now.

It's kind of an expensive experiment, if you don't already own the card....

I'm also very interested in the Sonnet x mini server setup which you linked to - I already own a mini - but I would love to get a clear report from someone who has used this configuration in a DIT station application. The only issue with this solution is that once you buy the chassis, the mini, the display, the keyboard, and the mouse or touchpad, you might as well just buy the whole iMac. The only reason I'm thinking about the mini chassis is because I already own the mini, display, keyboard, and mouse....

I'm currently running a 27'' iMac as my DIT station, with the Sonnet box and Rocket card. It's not super portable or totally great in the field, like the mac mini - but it is self-contained with a 2k screen, which is really nice for viewing and playback. With the Sonnet box, it is faster than my old tower, for sure.

The big shortcoming on both the mini and the iMac solutions seem to be CUDA acceleration right now. If we can find a way to make that happen - if anyone has any ideas - I wouldn't care if Mac ever released another tower again - the new computers are fast, and Thunderbolt adds a superb degree of flexibility and expansion (even though it is NOT CHEAP right now!!)

anyway - I hope this helps. I am definitely moving everything, as fast as I can afford it, to Thunderbolt and SSD...in the coming era of Dragon, there will be no such thing as too much speed or storage....

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

Here's a couple of the Mods so far, top case fan and rear Red BNC ports. One note, in order to clear the space between the top of the case and the red rocket card, I had to use a 60 x 60 x 10 mm fan.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Yes, but if you're using the Rocket and a 6Gb eSATA controller you're not going to get 6Gb speeds anyway since one Rocket will use up a lot of the 10Gb bandwidth of Thunderbolt as it is. Plus even if I'm only transferring data (no Rocket), I typically need 3 or 4 eSATA ports so I have 2 eSATA hubs which totals 12Gb on their own (3Gb x 4), so 6Gb ports would rarely be taken advantage of anyway. Now if you have 2 Thunderbolt ports it could be different, but I still think there'd be less performance different realized than you may think when transferring data between multiple drives.

Understood Mike, but some of us are not running multiple drives at once...so in my case i'm only running one drive to do transfers from SSD and then light color work...so 6gb/sec speed has been essential for me on my tower....and I'd like that to be same on my MBP....That said, there are a wide variety of needs out there. But one question i ask...is this: is 10gb/sec speed the limit ONLY on T-bolt? and then via express port you have additional speed? OR--is the entire system limited to 10gb/sec? I'm assuming that T-bolt gives us up to 10gb/sec speeds and other hard devices: FW800/USB & Express are optional/more transfer speed. Or maybe someone can tell me i'm absolutely wrong....

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

Thunder Bolt runs two or four channels, each is bi-directional 10 Gb/s and divided into basically x4 pci-e lanes. So you get x8 or x16 lanes in both directions at the same time. When you run the type 2 expresscard slot on a new MBP 17", x1 or x2 of the lanes have to be routed to the expresscard, since it shares the TB controller, you do lose some performance on the back end or the daisy chain of your TB devices/connections, in the case of also using your MBP express card slot. Most devices or cards will also be assigned 1 or 2 lanes depending on bandwidth needs. My Caldigit card uses x1 lane for eSATA (shared between two ports) and x1 lane for USB 3 (shared between two ports), or x2 lanes total. The TB cable also has x1 control channel and a display port channel.

 

[Corey Robson]

I would agree with others' speed assessment for the Expressbox 3T (pretty damn awesome,) the only thing I'd add is that if you intend to use one or more right on set, the power supply fan is noisy when in a warm environment. That plus 17" Macbook Pro fans running at 5500RPM during transcoding is close to a deal breaker for me on my current job. I replaced the front fan with a quieter model but I can't replace the PSU fan without major surgery to the case & PSU. I have a pre-production model though so hopefully the production version is quieter. Pretty great tool though when a full Mac Pro setup isn't practical.

 

[Timur Civan]

which esata SAS are you using, Timur? I'm looking for one, but the ATTO is hugely expensive, looking for a cheaper model - what are you using?

Atto, the pricey one. Its very stable. Tom Wong helped me build it.

 

[Tim Jones]

I have one of the Magmas on pre-order but have heard pretty good things about the Sonnet. Current shipping on Magma appears to be 6-8 weeks. So if you need it now, consider the available options.

In my opinion, you can never have enough slots. We need disk I/O, video I/O, GPU processors, etc. It adds up quick.

Unfortunately, more slots doesn't bring extra bandwidth. You're still limited by the single Thunderbolt link and we've been able to easily saturate that with a high-speed SSD array and an LTO-5 tape drive.

As long as you're only using some of the devices instead of all of the devices, that 3rd slot can be a good thing. But, if you're planning to transcode, ingest, and backup at the same tie, you'll not be happy. Also, having to mod the case for cooling as in Shiblon's photos is not a good thing - and I suspect voids your warranty...

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Unfortunately, more slots doesn't bring extra bandwidth. You're still limited by the single Thunderbolt link and we've been able to easily saturate that with a high-speed SSD array and an LTO-5 tape drive.

As long as you're only using some of the devices instead of all of the devices, that 3rd slot can be a good thing. But, if you're planning to transcode, ingest, and backup at the same tie, you'll not be happy. Also, having to mod the case for cooling as in Shiblon's photos is not a good thing - and I suspect voids your warranty...

This would be a secondary system that would not be doing all of those tasks at once. But could house various cards needed for certain tasks. Right now, the multitasking machines are still the towers for me.

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

Its a pre-release Magma 3T unit, I'm experimenting a little with its maximum capabilities, the rear mounted HD-SDI ports only require drilling out a $0.10 cent bracket, you can replace or change the bracket with a screw driver, and many pci-e cards come with various sizes or additional brackets for mounting situations. As far as mounting the fan to the lid, it allows me the option of running an eSATA or USB 3 card or the HD-SDI bracket in the 3rd slot instead of the pci-e slot cooling fan that comes with the magma 3T kit. If you run x3 cards and one is a red rocket, you'll probably want to run the case with the lid off instead. I like both the Magma and Sonnet cases, I use both, but I like the extra slot of the Magma, and there's enough space to make modifications if you feel the need for it. I get concerned about heat issues when running more than just the red rocket in the Sonnet case, not so much with the Magma. The $5,000 RR card wins out vs the sub $1,000 sonnet or magma case as far as warranty or modifying the case to fill my needs.

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

This would be a secondary system that would not be doing all of those tasks at once. But could house various cards needed for certain tasks. Right now, the multitasking machines are still the towers for me.

this is where the mini has come in handy when I needed it - a third Thunderbolt port and an SSD, good for offloading - fits in a 1510 peli with a 17'' screen..

iMac + separate mini is still less costly than a tower, especially because I could recycle old peripherals to rig the mini - does anyone remember the old Hanns-G? it finally found new life....

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Doesn't matter how many channels are in a Thunderbolt connector right now.. Or at least not for individual devices, it helps when chaining them up. Currently, only two are available in all the configurations out there. The mini-displayport connectors support up to 4 channels and will offer that at some point in the not too distant future. Of course, all current cables, devices and computers with Thunderbolt ports are locked in at the two channels available now and can't magically upgrade. The update to Thunderbolt should happen probably late next year or early 2014.

As of this moment, Intel and their Thunderbolt licensing only allows each device on the chain to utilize one 10Gbps channel. And no, that doesn't mean cards installed in your expansion boxes. The expansion box itself is allocated one channel. Period. This also didn't help a lot of early Thunderbolt development as initially a lot of the companies jumping on board were under the impression that both channels could be utilized by one device.

Not only are more channels per port coming, so is increased bandwidth per channel.

 

[Mike Halper]

So Jeff, does this mean there's really no real advantage to the supposed increase bandwidth purported by the Magma 3T? I'd be really interested to know if transcoding and playback performance of a Red Rocket is better in a Magma 3T vs the Sonnet EE Pro. Could someone with both chassis do a test with the same cards in the chassis?

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

Once this available.. put two 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD ... + Sonnet EE Pro with RR = best option for now

It looks like OWC is now offering up to 960gb expansion on the Mercury Accelsior PCI SSD card - certainly not cheap but it breaks the 512gb barrier and is upgradeable, also listed as compatible with the Sonnet box - and available right now - http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

things are changing very fast.

I'm hilariously torn between this and the $50 two-port Sonnet 2 port PCI-E adapter for the 2nd lane in my Sonnet box - oh, to jump in or wait it out a while longer....

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

So Jeff, does this mean there's really no real advantage to the supposed increase bandwidth purported by the Magma 3T? I'd be really interested to know if transcoding and playback performance of a Red Rocket is better in a Magma 3T vs the Sonnet EE Pro. Could someone with both chassis do a test with the same cards in the chassis?

There should be a small advantage to bandwidth with the Rocket in the Magma 3T because you can install the Rocket in an 8 lane slot. While the pipe running from the Magma to the host system is going to be the same as if you were running a Sonnet, you have better distribution of PCIe lanes onto that data pipe within the Magma box. The Rocket is a PCIe v1.x 8-lane card, it's just a better match-up to place it into an X8 or X16 slot so you're not cutting it's I/O lanes in half right from the get-go. In theory, the advantage could be as much as 190MB/s. In practice, I have yet to see a side by side comparison, so it's academic and I'm betting that performance differences between the two will depend more on the efficiency of the hardware implementation. Not only that, but in most all current Thunderbolt situations, we're connecting to a Macbook Pro/Air or iMac/Mini. None of which are going to have the CPU power to really utilize the maximum bandwidth the Rocket could supply over Thunderbolt anyway. At least that is the case for the moment.

Here it is by the numbers:

PCIe v1.x = 250MB/s per lane
PCIe v2.x = 500MB/s per lane
Thunderbolt expander = 10Gbps = 1192MB/s

RED Rocket PCIe v1.x X8 = 2000MB/s

Drop that in an X4 slot, you get 1000MB/s max throughput. So we're close to the limit of Thunderbolt anyway.

In an X8 slot such as the Magma, you have doubled the number of PCIe channels available to the Rocket card to filter to the Thunderbolt interface and increased internal potential to 2000MB/s. But the outbound pipe is still 1192MB/s.

 

[Mike Halper]

Okay, thanks for the numbers. So it's potentially a nearly 20% performance increase with the Magma 3T vs the Sonnet, assuming you're using only the Rocket in the chassis. However, what if you're using an SAS card also, and transcoding to/from a drive connected to the SAS card? Or if I'm using just the Rocket in the chassis, but transcoding to/from a hard drive connected via a LaCie Thunderbolt eSATA hub? I assume the Magma 3T would give no better performance at that point since the TB bandwidth is now being shared amongst the Rocket and the hard drive?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Theoretically as much as a 19.2% increase. But those are peak numbers and real-world numbers are never that high for any of the specs above. You need almost 1900MB/s to transport 5KFF (5120x2700) at 16bit RGB uncompressed at 24fps from the Rocket card to the system if you're trying to do something at full resolution. You most likely would not do this, it makes no sense for this system application, but just saying. There's plenty of bandwidth there to export / transcode to 1080p in real time though and then some. So in most cases you're not going to exceed the bandwidth allotment on the Sonnet enclosure anyway. If you do saturate it, current systems/CPUs are most likely going to bottleneck as you can't process through that much image data as fast as the Rocket can send it. At least not current Macbook Pro, iMac or Mac Mini systems.

I think for me where the Magma 3T is the more attractive expander is it just provides more options to configure a system.

And if you run a SAS card or something else in the expander with the Rocket, they both have to share the bandwidth. Bandwidth is bi-directional, so the performance hit should be relatively low if most data coming out of the expander is from the Rocket and most data going to the expander is directed to your SAS card.

One other thing we can run into with Thunderbolt is how Intel has implemented the host. It sits on a PCIe v2.0 X4 interface, which is 2000MB/s. That is actually less than the 20Gbps aggregate bandwidth of both channels in the Thunderbolt port. So if you connect two high-speed Thunderbolt devices, like two PCIe expanders and try to run them at full capacity, you'll cap out at 2000MB/s, which is a bit over 16Gbps. On the bright side, each Thunderbolt port on a system at this time sits on it's own PCIe v2.0 X4 allocation.