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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 :)

Magma ExpressBox 3T

Any updates? Curious how these would work in tandem:

Ultra studio (for resolve)
SAS Storage H680
Rocket
Promise RAID

At what point do you begin to saturate the TB lanes?
 
I have no problems using BM Intensity and RR in an Echo Express Pro and a Pegasus RAID on the other port of a Retina MBP.
 
2.6 Ghz with 512 GB SSD and 16 GB RAM. I consider RAM more effective than clock cycles. With the Thunderbolt box and the RAID it comes quite close to a MacPro…

One example: 1 Minute of native QuadHD 25 fps transcoded to 1080 in max quality in 19 minutes by CPU, 50 seconds by RR.
 
Uli Plank said:
I have no problems using BM Intensity and RR in an Echo Express Pro and a Pegasus RAID on the other port of a Retina MBP.
Click to expand...

Uli what speeds are you getting with the RR? As in 4x or ? playback res?

Im thinking of getting the new Sonnet Temp SSD Pro to avoid external drives.

Want to make this small as possible.
 
The Red Rocket card and several other manufacturer's PCI-e cards are thunderbolt "aware", and will work over thunderbolt as long as the device was plugged in during startup as with normal PCI-e extension setups, but because the cards will never be hot swappable they cannot be classified as thunderbolt "compatible", and will only ever be listed as thunderbolt "aware".
 
Does anyone know if GPUs work with the Magma?
Sadly the Sonnet dont.
 
GPUs and Thunderbolt Expansion boxes

GPUs and Thunderbolt Expansion boxes

Eric Santiago said:
Does anyone know if GPUs work with the Magma?
Sadly the Sonnet dont.
Click to expand...


GPUs not working with the Sonnet expansion boxes is not specific to Sonnet or any Tbolt manufacturer for that matter .... most modern PCIe GPUs are x 16 lane PCIe cards with very high speed I/O to the MB and CPU .... Tbolt by definition is only x 8 lanes maximum ... so though you can get 10GBs I/O speed on the Tbolt bus you don't have enough PCIe lanes to carry the tremendous amount of data that modern GPUs typically process.

Believe me, I've tried every which way to get our Sonnet Tbolt expansion boxes to work with nVIDIA GPUS ... but no luck (if anyone cracks the code - please let us all know) ... Tbolt will not even see a x 16 lane GPU.

Also, the bandwidth requirements for CUDA based image processing are incredibly high ... in one of our Mac Resolve Systems I'm using three EVGA GTX 690 cards (i.e., six GTX 680 cards) to push Resolve to the limits .... only the PCIe bus can handle that data throughput.

The Sonnet Tbolt expansion boxes are terrific for adding RedRocket, Fiber Channel, 10GigE and eSATA cards but alas not GPUs .... still a Retina Display MBP with a couple of Sonnet Tbolt boxes attached is a beast of a machine .... now if there was just someway to snuck a couple of EVGA 690s in there somehow, we'd be happy as Larry.

Will be interesting to see how Apple incorporates Tbolt and USB 3 as well as PCIe 3 into next year's Mac Pro Tower upgrade.

Cheers,
Neil
 
Thanks Neil.
Yes that would be perfect if GPUs did work on the Sonnets :)
I take it that the Magma isnt 16x either.
 
x 8 lanes electrical Thunderbolt restriction

x 8 lanes electrical Thunderbolt restriction

Eric Santiago said:
Thanks Neil.
Yes that would be perfect if GPUs did work on the Sonnets :)
I take it that the Magma isnt 16x either.
Click to expand...

Yes, the x 8 electrical lane restriction is a limitation of the Thunderbolt specification defined by Intel, not the implementation of that spec in any particular vendor's expansion box ... GPUs require x 16 lane electrical PCIe .... Tbolt peripherals can only handle a max of x8 lanes electrical ... maybe nVIDIA will find a cool way to implement their CUDA architecture in a x 8 lane GPU ... then we'd have the best of the best of both worlds :-)

Neil

P.S. please note the use of the term x 16 electrical .... you can certainly stick a x 16 mechanical card in a Sonnet or Magma Tbolt expansion box but that does not address the fundamental issue of the Intel electrical usage specification ... i.e.. max of x 8 electrical.
 
Neil W. Smith said:
Yes, the x 8 electrical lane restriction is a limitation of the Thunderbolt specification defined by Intel, not the implementation of that spec in any particular vendor's expansion box ... GPUs require x 16 lane electrical PCIe .... Tbolt peripherals can only handle a max of x8 lanes electrical ... maybe nVIDIA will find a cool way to implement their CUDA architecture in a x 8 lane GPU ... then we'd have the best of the best of both worlds :-)

Neil

P.S. please note the use of the term x 16 electrical .... you can certainly stick a x 16 mechanical card in a Sonnet or Magma Tbolt expansion box but that does not address the fundamental issue of the Intel electrical usage specification ... i.e.. max of x 8 electrical.
Click to expand...


Thus why our REDROCKET works I guess.
Thanks Neil :)
 
Thunderbolt really is in its infancy. I know that it will continue to evolve and will probably at some point support GPUs and other interesting things. I have tested a 3T and I find it super cool. The ability to run 2 8x cards and a 4x card over a single thunderbolt cable is something I didn't think would be possible this soon with Thunderbolt. I just wish I could go out and buy another one right now! My rocket will never have to be pulled out of a system to be used on the road now at all, which is easily worth the price. Considering you can also drop in a raid card into it and have access to high sped storage systems on a laptop in the field, is amazing.

This box finally, makes the iMac an acceptable r3d edit computer (When they are updated to Ivy Bridge with Cuda Accelerated video cards)
 
If the Magma was in high production we would have opted for that.
 
During IBC I had the chance to test both the Magma ExpressBox 3T and the Sonnet Echo Express Pro
connected to a Retina Display MacBookPro laptop ... using Assimilate SCRATCH. For both SCRATCH log
files reported the Red Rocket as "low" data bandwidth.

As far as I understand "Low" means the Red Rocket card is being used as a x4 PCIe card as opposed to
"Full" being x8 ...

The Magma box only had the Red Rocket card inside. The Sonnet had two cards: the Red Rocket and a
SAS RAID controller, but I think only the Red Rocket was being used ... both reported the Red Rocket as
"Low" in SCRATCH's log files (I believe that log reports what the RED SDK reports).

Can someone confirm they are getting "Full" x8 via Thunderbolt from a Red Rocket?
I am not sure if "Full" performance is possible !! ...

I apologize if this has been discussed and clarified before on this thread or other threads in RedUser,
I did check but did not find a clear answer ....

Daniel Perez
WhyOnSet Madrid
DI & DIT Consultant
 
Since the problem existed in a MacPro before if you wanted two GPUs for DaVinci Resolve I did extensive testing. While RCX complained that the RR was in a 4x slot, the loss in performance was minimal, about 2-4 % vs. sitting in a 8x slot. The same applies to a Sonnet I tested here for "Digital Production" magazine (Munich) recently, even if the other slot was used for monitoring with a BM DeckLink card.

Go ahed and get whatever TB chassis works for you, the RR is doing fine. Beware of 10.8.2, though, stay 10.8.1 for now.
 
Magma has shipped :)
 
Magma rocking a ROCKET and Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro w/Retina.
He bonus with the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro PCI card is that they give you the PCI plate with the two BNC holes for the ROCKETS SDI ports.
No more 4X warning and def getting great speeds here.
The hardware isnt as robust as the Sonnet Echo Express but three ports with 8X is a good enough trade off.
 
Eric Santiago said:
The hardware isnt as robust as the Sonnet Echo Express but three ports with 8X is a good enough trade off.
Click to expand...
Can you elaborate on 'the hardware isn't as robust?' I'm currently trying to decide between the Echo Express 2L Pro and the Magma and while the price of the Sonnet is lower, the Magma offers that third slot which could come in handy in the future. However, if the hardware isn't very 'robust,' that gives me pause. What's the overall consensus between these two chassis? It seems like people are having good rocket success in both.
 
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