New MacBook Pro

[Graham Foulkes]

Will red rocket work with lightning bolt or is the only option still with the 17 " for the expess card slot ?
Will Cs5 work with cuda support with ATI cards.( I dont think so ?)
Is it likely the new final cut due in spring will have real time play back for scarlet on these new i7 laptops.?

 

[ericyoung]

Thunderbolt will hopefully have a third party adapter to Expresscard 34 which will allow a current Mobile Red Rocket to work.

CS5 CUDA acceleration will not work with ATI graphics on the new MacBook Pro.

Don't know.

 

[Chris Kenny]

Thunderbolt can provide a 4x PCIe channel -- 4x faster than ExpressCard. And an external PCIe enclosure should literally be the easiest peripheral it's possible to make, since TB natively speaks PCIe. So hopefully we won't have to wait too long. What's more, TB should be able to simultaneously handle both an external Rocket, and a nice fast RAID, and maybe the external equivalent of a BlackMagic or AJA video interface. Bandwidth might get dicy if you try transcode via the Rocket at 4K while playing back uncompressed HD footage from the RAID at the same time or something, but for non-pathological use (heh) a 10 Gb/s link should handle this pretty well. Plus there's a second 10 Gb/s channel on the same port, if you want to hook up a 27" monitor....

All in all, TB, once devices start to arrive, seems like it's going to eliminate the need for a tower in a lot of situations that presently require one.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

It seems I am reading conflicting assessments as to whether current Macs (specifically, Mac Pros) can be "retro-fitted" (for lack of a better term) with TB capability. To me, it seems that a PCIe card could be built for the "translation" but, supposedly, Intel says it would require a new motherboard. Can anyone sort this out for us?

 

[ericyoung]

I'm guessing the reason why Intel says there won't be PCIe cards is that TB is supposed to also allow display connection and would therefore need direct access to the graphics subsystem, and hence necessary motherboard integration.

However, some enterprising third party might see a market for non-display TB peripheral connectivity. We can hope!

 

[Chris Kenny]

Yeah, we don't really know what a Thunderbolt implementation looks like on a system that doesn't have graphics on the motherboard. How does this work? Are Intel/Apple going to try to get graphics card vendors to integrate Thunderbolt controllers into their cards? Are they going to try to get graphics card vendors to offer internal DisplayPort connectors, which can then feed into a TB controller on the motherboard and ultimately out (after muxing with PCIe) through an external TB port on the motherboard?

 

[Jon Braeley]

I just ordered the 17inch. I think it's a gamechanger.

I also have a suspicion that Apple may eliminate the Mac Pro ... and push iMacs and MacBooks. While I love my Octo-MacPro and my 8-drive raid, its tough making it fit into plane overhead bins!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

It seems I am reading conflicting assessments as to whether current Macs (specifically, Mac Pros) can be "retro-fitted" (for lack of a better term) with TB capability. To me, it seems that a PCIe card could be built for the "translation" but, supposedly, Intel says it would require a new motherboard. Can anyone sort this out for us?

There are some technical requirements and some marketing that are influencing these statements. Intel will not be offering PCIe to Thunderbolt peripheral cards. Third parties may do so, nothing stopping them.

As ericyoung mentions, one technical factor is that Thunderbolt must provide displayport video signaling. So any Thunderbolt add-in card is going to need a graphics chipset as well as a PCIe expansion/cascade controller.

I would look for upcoming GPU cards from nVidia and AMD(ATI) to be the most likely candidates for supplying Thunderbolt ports. For an example, later this year we could see the new GeForce GTX680 with dual Thunderbolt ports. So you can connect displays and/or other peripherals. I suppose it's possible, but time will tell. Later this year all new Intel-chipset motherboards will be shipping with Thunderbolt ports anyway... Moving forward, the need for Thunderbolt adapters is minimal and they will be supplying a legacy market. Or the niche markets where people need more ports.

On the flip side of things, I could see low-cost Thunderbolt adapters that utilize bottom-tier or even mobile GPU chipsets to meet the requirements while also delivering mostly on the data side of the equation. I don't know about you guys, but a PCIe 2.0 X8 card with dual Thunderbolt Ports backed by a simple GPU like a GeForce 300M would be a very attractive add-in card. And it could probably have a street price under $80.

 

[Chris Kenny]

I also have a suspicion that Apple may eliminate the Mac Pro ... and push iMacs and MacBooks.

Heh. You know, at some point in the future, you'll be able to edit 5K footage footage in real-time on your nth-generation iPad, and 40 pound towers will occupy the same market niche presently occupied by refrigerator-sized computers. Before that happens, Apple will quit making one. Probably, in characteristic style, a year or two before a lot of people are comfortable with the idea.

But we're not quite there yet....

 

[Christoffer Glans]

Has anyone done some "on the field" benchmarking of the new macbooks?
How high in quality postproduction can be done? With Thunderbolt you are able to throughput quite a high data rate, but what is the processing power, the 8gb ram and intel/amd graphics able to do together with the thunderbolt connection?

Can we edit uncompressed HD in a fluid way? Or can we get higher, maybe 2K, 4K?

 

[Nick Gallegos]

The biggest limiting factor of the new MBPs is the memory ceiling. They can't go past 8GB, which still pushes them out of consideration for anyone doing heavy post with 64-bit software. Also, although they are a huge step in the right direction with the new TB tech, it's hard to say at this point how fast manufacturers are going to jump on board to develop compatible TB peripherals outside of storage and displays.

So, I wouldn't consider the new MBPs to be true desktop replacements just yet. A lot of post people still need specialized expansion cards (I/O, capture, pro GPUs, accelerators, etc.) to get their work done efficiently.

But I am thankful that Apple is finally shipping quad-core laptops. It took long enough.

 

[Wolf]

Been wondering when to pull the trigger on the new 2011 MacBook Pro and thought there was no point in paying for it until Thunderbolt accessories are shipping in quantities. But then I noticed this little thing:
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-6g/perform/

Does anybody know if this E-SATA card will work with RED STATION?

And does this mean that the 2011 MacBook Pro 17" is shipping with Expresscard 2.0 standard? Or is FirmTek doing some other trick to get these numbers?

Thanks,

 

[Richard Tran]

Just a quick correction.

You can have 16GB on the new MBP btw.

check on macsales.

 

[Mark Gilmer]

I just purchased the new MacBook Pro 17", but more for use with Alexa and the SxS Pro Res work flow. As for Red, I think it's silly to try to make use of a Rocket card with the 17", even with Thunderbolt. In my tower the Rocket card occupies the 16x slot. Thunderbolt functions at roughly the equivalent PCIe speed of a 4x slot.

Here are the speeds of PCI-e slots (version 1 and version 2 PCI-e):

pci-e (per lane, each direction)
v1 2gbps 2003
v2 4 gbps 2007
v3 8gbps spec released end of 2010

pci-e v2
1x 4 gbps
2x 8 gbps
4x 16 gbps
8x 32 gbps
16x 64 gbps

Thunderbolt tops out at 10 gbps, and the 16x slot is 64 gbps. In addition people are talking about running their raid AND their monitor thru that port as well, which would slow it down even further.

I think Thunderbolt is great as a display and high speed storage option, but it simply can't compete to a Mac Pro tower, with a 16x PCIe slot. Also, consider that an 8 core Mac tower isn't much more that the maxed out 17" Mac Book at this point.

What is really going to be bad ass is the next generation Mac Pro tower with 12 cores (24 virtual cores), multiple thunderbolt ports, and 2 x 16x PCIe slots ( to run 2 Rocket cards for 3-D)

just my 2 cents.

 

[Mark Gilmer]

Wolf, that esata express 34 card will work with the Red Station. I had the older version with my older 17" and it was really fast, but this new one offers double the speed, however, only with the new 2011 17" mac books.

 

[ericyoung]

I just purchased the new MacBook Pro 17", but more for use with Alexa and the SxS Pro Res work flow. As for Red, I think it's silly to try to make use of a Rocket card with the 17", even with Thunderbolt. In my tower the Rocket card occupies the 16x slot. Thunderbolt functions at roughly the equivalent PCIe speed of a 4x slot...

Not at all silly if your type of work involves mobile camera work in remote locations.

 

[Mark Gilmer]

May I exchange silly for impractical? I'm not saying it can't be done. I do agree that there may be situations that require a highly mobile portable unit, however on the whole, if you are going to be doing a lot of render/transcoding work, a tower will always make much more sense.