Magma Thunderbolt

[Shiblon Wixom]

NAB Magma Thunderbolt Demo
We had a chance to test out this pre-release thunderbolt case a week before and during NAB. The 3 slot PCI-e Magma thunderbolt case works well in Windows 7 boot-camp or Mac OS X. Red rocket transcodes with a new Macbook Pro 17" are near real time (1:1) using about half or less of system processors, the same performance seen in a Mac Tower. In addition to the Red Rocket card we are running an LSI 9750-8e SAS controller to an external AIC RAID Box.

The Magma thunderbolt case has a large modular fan in front (with selectable case fan settings) and another power supply fan in the back, we started with a PCI-e mounted cooling fan in the 3rd slot for the Red Rocket card, just in case it ran a little hot, but we never noticed any heat issues with or without the extra cooling fan. The case has sixteen PCI-e lanes total, and runs a two (x8/x8) card or three (x8/x4/x4) card configuration. Transfers between a thunderbolt connected 6Gb/s SSD or PCI-e Flash Warp Drive and the Raid Box avg 380 to 410 MB/s. If the system is connected at maximum speeds, we are able to offload the Red SSD to the Raid Box around 200 MB/s and also maintain 1/2 debayer playback or transcode at full rate. We didn't notice any difference between running the Red Rocket card at x4 vs x8 lanes when we chose to run a third FireWire 800 PCI-e card in addition to the Red Rocket and raid controller.

This thunderbolt case would work equally well (max performance, such as real time transcodes) with a new iMac, but do not expect real time transcodes on a Macbook Air 13" or Mac Mini. Using full system processing power and resources you may get better than half speed performance, perhaps 15-18 fps transcodes, but you will not max out the capabilities of a Red Rocket card with an Air or Mini.

 

[Steve Johnson]

Thanks for this Shiblon

Very interesting to hear that the Magma with a RR card transcodes in near real time using a MacBookPro 17".

Given the thunderbolt daisy chaining, I was wondering what the transcoding time would be if you where using TB to transcode but then to put those files on a TB RAID further down the chain. Seems plausible.

My plan was going from MBP17 to a TB chassis with an additional CalDigit 6G3U card in for connecting the RED Station and CF Reader then stuck 3x TB RAID' at the end of the chain - like the new GTech TB RAIDs which would give a nice portable solution opposed to lugging the MacPro everywhere.

Be interesting to see when all these chassis are actually being released.

)

 

[James Drake]

Pretty solid performance. I was a little disappointed not to see a Red Rocket running in the Magma box at NAB... maybe I missed it?

 

[Tom.Wong]

they were right in the red booth, demo-ing for LSI and showing it off with the magma with sas connection and rocket. it was rad. have my magma on pre order, can wait.

 

[Thor Wixom]

Pretty solid performance. I was a little disappointed not to see a Red Rocket running in the Magma box at NAB... maybe I missed it?

James,

Yes, Shiblon (my brother) and I were showing the Redrocket in the Magma TB case at the Red booth, as well as at the LSI booth. We were getting near amazing performance, on par with a desktop system.

Also, we were running the LSI controller and a RAID 5 from the same box, with no bottlenecks. It was amazing!

-Thor Wixom

 

[Thor Wixom]

Thanks for this Shiblon

Very interesting to hear that the Magma with a RR card transcodes in near real time using a MacBookPro 17".

Given the thunderbolt daisy chaining, I was wondering what the transcoding time would be if you where using TB to transcode but then to put those files on a TB RAID further down the chain. Seems plausible.

My plan was going from MBP17 to a TB chassis with an additional CalDigit 6G3U card in for connecting the RED Station and CF ReadSer then stuck 3x TB RAID' at the end of the chain - like the new GTech TB RAIDs which would give a nice portable solution opposed to lugging the MacPro everywhere.

Be interesting to see when all these chassis are actually being released.

)

Steve,

Yes, you can do that. We chose the LSI controller, but you can daisy chain at TB RAID with no hit in performance.

-Thor