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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 :)

Red rocket in Sonnet Thunderbold chassis with Adobe Premiere

Michael Kromschroeder

Michael Kromschroeder

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Ted@red did show a RED Rocket in the Sonnet Thunderbolt
Chassis at IBC in Amsterdam 2011.

It worked with Red Cine and Adobe Premiere and as it would in a MacPro!
No dropped Frames at all. Full screen Playback to a 27 inch Cinema Display
without any issues!

d552a871f1904c2aa56967a36f17014e_7.jpg
 
Alexander Alexandrov said:
but it's a x4 module, not a x8pci correct? so technically it's half as good as sitting in a mac pro?
Click to expand...

Theoretically true ... if you have a device that can use that speed.

Rocket can't. Video i/o cards like the Decklink Extreme 3D+ can't. (These are 4x devices but they operate properly and at full capacity under most circumstances in a 1x slot!)

Most GPU's can't. Even top tier GPU's have a tough time filling a x8 PCIe 2.0 slot. When used solely for calculation (as in CUDA for Resolve) they often have trouble filling a 4x PCIe.

A 4 port eSATA 6g card can theoretically, but not in practice due to overhead. You can find multiport Fiber Channel connectors that can use it up readily.

2.5GB/s (10gbps) is nothing to sneeze at.

Oh, and Thunderbolt is full duplex ... so whjile you can inly use PCIe x4 devices ... there is more room for overhead on those devices. So that 4 port eSATA 6g card? That can work up to theoretical max speed if its the only Thunderbolt device on the bus.

It's not a panacea ... with up to 7 devices you can overwhelm the interface's throughput. Internal PCIe slots are with us for some time to come.

PCIe 3.0 is "around the corner" though. I suspect we'll have a huge bump in Thunderbolt performance at that time. Probably a shift to fiber and the use of a 4x PCIe 3 slot in external devices. (So, up to 20Gbps full duplex plus Displayport per thunderbolt channel.)
 
I'm hoping Magma provides Thunderbolt adaptor card for the previous expansion chassis.
 
Alexander Alexandrov said:
but it's a x4 module, not a x8pci correct? so technically it's half as good as sitting in a mac pro?
Click to expand...

Correct, but let's be realistic here. To get the full gen1 X8 speed out of the Rocket would saturate the Thunderbolt port and overrun anything else you could connect to the laptop anyway. Most of the time X4 bandwidth is plenty good what you will use the Rocket for. At X4, you can still connect some fast external storage as well.

On a 17" MBP with the ExpressCard slot, you can connect a 1.8" SSD reader via an eSATA adapter. You can then connect the Rocket and a Thunderbolt HDD or RAID to the Thunderbolt port. Going to be a smokin' config for a compact DIT setup.

There are other Thunderbolt PCIe expanders coming besides the Sonnet. There's one from MAGMA that will allow the Rocket to run at full X8 speed, but like I said, it would saturate the Thunderbolt port at full bandwidth and would be overkill considering the bandwidth of anything else you could connect to current notebook systems. OTOH, the 27" iMac has dual Thunderbolt ports... Hmm.... :)
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Correct, but let's be realistic here. To get the full gen1 X8 speed out of the Rocket would saturate the Thunderbolt port and overrun anything else you could connect to the laptop anyway. Most of the time X4 bandwidth is plenty good what you will use the Rocket for. At X4, you can still connect some fast external storage as well.

On a 17" MBP with the ExpressCard slot, you can connect a 1.8" SSD reader via an eSATA adapter. You can then connect the Rocket and a Thunderbolt HDD or RAID to the Thunderbolt port. Going to be a smokin' config for a compact DIT setup.

There are other Thunderbolt PCIe expanders coming besides the Sonnet. There's one from MAGMA that will allow the Rocket to run at full X8 speed, but like I said, it would saturate the Thunderbolt port at full bandwidth and would be overkill considering the bandwidth of anything else you could connect to current notebook systems. OTOH, the 27" iMac has dual Thunderbolt ports... Hmm.... :)
Click to expand...


my plans are to both invest in the sonnet and magma TB expanders... sonnets for mobile laptop setups, and the half sized one is gonna be perfect for any 4 port esata card. and i'm anticipating at least 2 full TB ports on next gen mac pros. even if i saturate a whole port with the rocket, that's gonna be a whole slot I save in the comp. it's gonna be pretty awesome... if apple doesn't drop the ball on next gen towers at least.

FYI, ATTO is working on TB solutions too, the details were a little vague, but some pretty amazing stuff should be coming on the horizon if ATTO is working on it. hopefully it means goodbye to sas cards, and you can get TB to sas adapters soon. connect to legacy sas storage, LTO, the whole nine yards.
 
The ATTO solutions are TB to SAS/SATA bridges, one looks like it can interface with their host controller designs. Their products should lead to more self-contained SAS and SATA RAID boxes that can be connected to Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt to SAS/SATA host controller type devices. I'd love a Thunderbolt to SAS expander that could be used to configure a few HDDs in a small RAID and an LTO-5 unit in the same box. :)
 
Michael Kromschroeder said:
Ted@red did show a RED Rocket in the Sonnet Thunderbolt
Chassis at IBC in Amsterdam 2011.

It worked with Red Cine and Adobe Premiere and as it would in a MacPro!
No dropped Frames at all. Full screen Playback to a 27 inch Cinema Display
without any issues!
Click to expand...

We also had it working with DIT Station, running SCRATCH Lab, at IBC. Playing Epic in real time at half rez on a MacBook Pro.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Correct, but let's be realistic here. To get the full gen1 X8 speed out of the Rocket would saturate the Thunderbolt port and overrun anything else you could connect to the laptop anyway. Most of the time X4 bandwidth is plenty good what you will use the Rocket for. At X4, you can still connect some fast external storage as well.

On a 17" MBP with the ExpressCard slot, you can connect a 1.8" SSD reader via an eSATA adapter. You can then connect the Rocket and a Thunderbolt HDD or RAID to the Thunderbolt port. Going to be a smokin' config for a compact DIT setup.

There are other Thunderbolt PCIe expanders coming besides the Sonnet. There's one from MAGMA that will allow the Rocket to run at full X8 speed, but like I said, it would saturate the Thunderbolt port at full bandwidth and would be overkill considering the bandwidth of anything else you could connect to current notebook systems. OTOH, the 27" iMac has dual Thunderbolt ports... Hmm.... :)
Click to expand...

We have an Express 3/4 mobile rocket on backorder... is it worth jumping ship on that and getting on the thunderbolt waggon? Or are these devices a long ways out?
 
Maxx Digital is also working with our suppliers on Thunder Bolt. The reality is that NO ONE will be shipping product before Q-1 and maybe later. We will have a TB solution and we also are hoping to be able to upgrade our existing MR customers when the time comes. At this time TB info is close to the vest and as we progress through the process we will let our customers know .
 
Ron Amborn said:
Maxx Digital is also working with our suppliers on Thunder Bolt. The reality is that NO ONE will be shipping product before Q-1 and maybe later. We will have a TB solution and we also are hoping to be able to upgrade our existing MR customers when the time comes. At this time TB info is close to the vest and as we progress through the process we will let our customers know .
Click to expand...

Looking forward for one to those Ron, still have one RR in case never open waiting for Thunderbolt... ;)
 
Ron Amborn said:
Maxx Digital is also working with our suppliers on Thunder Bolt. The reality is that NO ONE will be shipping product before Q-1 and maybe later. We will have a TB solution and we also are hoping to be able to upgrade our existing MR customers when the time comes. At this time TB info is close to the vest and as we progress through the process we will let our customers know .
Click to expand...

Thanks Ron, we shall wait patiently :)
 
James Drake said:
We have an Express 3/4 mobile rocket on backorder... is it worth jumping ship on that and getting on the thunderbolt waggon? Or are these devices a long ways out?
Click to expand...

I would jump on Thunderbolt, but that's just me. Several options ready to drop soon. Save the ExpressCard slot for your eSATA adapter. I respect Ron's input, but I'm not so sure about no one shipping before Q1. He could be right, but I'm in touch with a few manufacturers that have told me otherwise. And I don't think they're blowing smoke, like they're going into actual production now or within the next 10 days or so. Of course, I'm talking about a few different Thunderbolt peripherals, not necessarily PCIe expanders.
 
We can not really discuss what we know as there are NDA's in place; however we are only focused on PCIE exspansion and storage so any other products that have TB are not really on our radar. Let's see what happens . My money is on, no shipping of production before q1. If i am wrong , well I owe Jeff K a Beer. :coolgleamA:
 
If I were interested in editing 4K for output to 1080p - could I conceivably run a top-speced macbook pro and premiere pro cs5.5 in more or less real-time (1/4 res playback is fine, 1/8 is too low though) - with a thunderbolt chassis + Red rocket, thunderbolt black magic ultrastudio i/o, a thunderbolt RAID, and maybe a final display port monitor? Would that be way too much bandwidth for the single thunderbolt port? If so, would the iMac with two ports solve this issue nicely?
Would a 2nd thunderbolt chassis w/ an Nvidia GPU like Quadro 4000 help a lot as well, or be unnecessary with the red rocket?
 
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