Sonnet Thunderbolt PCI Express expansion chassis

[Kaku Ito]

Only x4 though.

http://www.sonnettech.com/news/pr2011/pr041111_thunderbolt.html

 

[Chris Kenny]

RedRocket works pretty well in a 4x slot. Between this, the UltraStudio 3D, and Thunderbolt RAID, the slot situation in Mac Pros is about to get a hell of a lot easier. Especially if Apple uses Intel's dual port Thunderbolt controller on the Mac Pro. With two external 4x PCIe channels, even a Rocket-equipped Resolve system could be built with no more than two internal cards (the two GPUs).

 

[Jean Déraps]

Anyone at Sonnet mention when these will be available?

 

[John Byrne]

As most devices for TB won't hit streets until summer soonest, is anyone standing pat until this technology is proven? Or, am I missing something?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

They said about 2 to 3 months out at the NAB booth. Some of their TB products will be closer to the 2 month mark, some the 3, maybe even 4. Promise was giving about the same time frame for their TB RAIDs and TB to FC converter.

As for the Sonnet TB PCIe Expander -- I think it's going to be an OK candidate for the RED Rocket or other potential peripherals. It's a PCIe 2.0 X4 (X16 electrical) slot, which utilizes most (about 85%) of the TB port bandwidth. Remember, TB is dual 10Gbps bi-directional channels (20Gbps aggregate) in one connector. PCIe 2.0 X4 is 2000MB/s or 16.8Gbps. What would be a better fit for the Rocket is a similar expander that gives us a single PCIe 1.1 X8 slot. It's the same overall bandwidth, but would let the Rocket use all of it and run full speed, since it's a v1.x 8-lane card.

Even as it stands, a Rocket running at half-speed would still be 4X faster than it can run on an ExpressCard34 expander right now...

 

[Eric Santiago]

RedRocket works pretty well in a 4x slot. Between this, the UltraStudio 3D, and Thunderbolt RAID, the slot situation in Mac Pros is about to get a hell of a lot easier. Especially if Apple uses Intel's dual port Thunderbolt controller on the Mac Pro. With two external 4x PCIe channels, even a Rocket-equipped Resolve system could be built with no more than two internal cards (the two GPUs).

I cant even get our RR card to work on 4x slot in 12core

 

[Brian Lehrer]

Anyway to get a RR in such a chassis, a blackmagic UltraStudio 3D, a Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID, and maybe a a display on a single thunderbolt port? Or is that way too much bandwidth? Could the imac with 2 ports handle it?