Thunderbolt Limitations

[Tom.Wong]

So recently got to do some extensive testing with thunderbolt. with with the 2011 17 inch macbook pro and the 15 inch retina. Thought I'd share my findings.

Started testing with a retina first, trying to plug in a magma express 3t and the sonnet echo 2 slot. one in each thunderbolt port. We had cards in every slot. and the system would hang up on login. Basically it froze up the computer.

After a lot of experimenting, of swapping cards, etc. Here are my basic conclusions and findings.

I'm sure there have been other info confirming this online, but I'm more positive now than ever those two TB ports are shared. NOT individual TB ports. which completely blows. Even plugging into both tb ports we flooded out the TB bandwidth. a single TB port can not handle more than 3 pci cards. and it will always show either 2x 8x lane cards, or 1x 8x and 2x 4x cards. identical to how the magma works. even if you have 2 cards in the 8x slots in the magma, and 1 card in the sonnet to try to fool the system to try to get 2 cards to show up as 8x and 1 card as 4x.

we got up to 4 cards where the computer could boot, but only 2 cards would show up in the system. as 2x 8x. so there really is no tricking the system. that's OSX and TB limitation.

so anybody out there with the hopes of daisy chaining expansion boxes with TB, magma is pretty much gonna be your max. or 2x sonnet's, since it all shows up as 4x slots. but we didn't have a second sonnet to absolutely confirm that.

i'm pretty ok with the limitation of a single TB port, the fact that it can hold 3 cards stable in itself is pretty amazing. but I was very unhappy with the fact that the retina macbook pro shared the same port. which is making me hold out, and keeping my 17 inch MBP till a generation comes out where I can get 2 full on tb ports. than it's game on.

hope these findings help someone down the line out.

 

[Victor MOREIRA]

Knowing the PCI bandwidth, this seems normal to me. Not so sure about the 2 TB ports sharing the same bandwidth.
The "Jedi" Jeff Kilgroe will soon clarify this...

 

[Tom.Wong]

well if they were completely individual ports, the two pci expanders should have shown up properly. with a max of 3 pci cards per pot. plugging in two boxes, the best we could get was 3 cards to show up across both ports. same as if i just had 3 cards in my magma plugged into a single port. so to me, this confirms that they are shared, unless there is something else going on here.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Perhaps this tidbit can shed some light:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...ave-two-thundebolt-busses-or-are-the-two-tb-p

 

[Kwan Khan]

There's talk about a 3rd-generation "Redwood Ridge" chip (2013), It will support 10 Gbps data rates, DisplayPort v1.1a and DisplayPort v1.2 Redriver. However faster speed Thunderbolt interface won't be realized until 2014. Intel is expected to release a 4th-generation Thunderbolt chip codenamed "Falcon Ridge", providing data rates up to 20 Gbps through two channels.

 

[Tom.Wong]

so not shared, but only 2 channels per port. but oddly enough. but it says a 4 channel one like the 17 inch can only use 2 channels at time. but either way, 2 expanders were not working. so they may be individual ports but only have the combined bandwidth of a single port on a 17 inch. outcome is still all the same when it comes to # of devices. all you'd get out of the retina is some more daisy chaining.

i'm still holding for 2x 4 channel ports on the system. i feel like the upgrade just isn't worth it right now. i got a tower to do all the heavy lifting.

 

[Eric Santiago]

Sorry to hijack your thread Tom, but how are you finding the two options?
If you had to choose one, which TB box would you go with?

 

[Tom.Wong]

Sorry to hijack your thread Tom, but how are you finding the two options?
If you had to choose one, which TB box would you go with?

well since 1 tb port seems to be 3 cards max. magma all the way. but i'll be honest, their customer support has dropped down a lot from what I've used to hear about them. I've had friends that have emailed them consistently without a single reply. they ARE shipping units but very slowly. a lot of orders to fulfill. but i pre ordered mine since they announced it so I got a pre production model which works great. 8x cards show the way they should. no hiccups in speed. but you'll always be limited to either 2 cards that show as 8x, or 1 8x card, and 2 4x cards. that's the way they'll show even if you put in all 8x cards. if you have nothing but 4x cards, maybe 2x sonnets MIGHT work, but i have not tested it for myself.

i own the magma and have used the sonnet. both are solid products. neither one is faster than the other. i like the magma just a touch better personally not just cause of the 3 slots, but it's really easier to pop the top off and start swapping cards. while the sonnet has a really heavy duty sliding enclosure that's takes a bit of force to get it off an on.

you really can't go wrong with either. just all about how many cards you'd think you want to use. if you are thinking rocket and esata card, the third slot int he magma can go to the rocket hd sdi. the only way to get hdsdi on the sonnet is either to eliminate a slot and reduce yourself to a 1 card config. or get the sonnet ssd adapter that has the bracket and throw in a lacie esata hub or maybe a cheap single unit tb expander on the daisy chain.

so to answer your question fully, i love the magma. but the sonnets are shipping now. and if i was in a situation where i needed one now, i wouldn't wait for the magma.

 

[Eric Santiago]

...so to answer your question fully, i love the magma. but the sonnets are shipping now. and if i was in a situation where i needed one now, i wouldn't wait for the magma.

Thanks Tom for your help.
You are right about Magma.
The out of stock sign has been on that unit for weeks now.
I did have a good tech relationship with them when our Pro Tools Magma went down for a bit.
I think we will go with the Sonnet.

 

[Nick Shaw]

At REDucation UK we had both the Sonnet and the Magma. I plugged both into a Retina MacBook Pro, and REDCINE-X was able to see two Rockets (8x in the Magma and 4x in the Sonnet). The Sonnet only had the Rocket in it, but the Magma had an eSATA card (don't know which) and a Sonnet Tempo SDD Pro. So four cards total and no crashes. Did not have an opportunity to test extensively though.

 

[Häakon]

If the Magma recognizes the Rocket as 8x and the Sonnet only 4x, does that mean you're getting double the performance from the Magma? From the way I read everyone's opinions that they're "both good," I would assume not... but people keep bringing it up. Apologies in advance for my ignorance on Thunderbolt.

 

[Eric Santiago]

To be honest I cant tell.
They both run at base (no light) 4K Full Debayer clips.
Of course the minute you add spice, then it slows down.
The 8X error and one less PCI slot was enough for us to get the Magma.
Some users dotn require 3 slots.
The bonus about is that we are using the HD-SDI PCI plate on the Magma which we got from the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro.
This lets you have three slots even with the HD-SDI not taking up any space since it replaced one from the Sonnet.
This way we dont need an ATTO for RAID.
We get 1TB with dual SSDs on that Tempo PCI card.

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

If the Magma recognizes the Rocket as 8x and the Sonnet only 4x, does that mean you're getting double the performance from the Magma? From the way I read everyone's opinions that they're "both good," I would assume not... but people keep bringing it up. Apologies in advance for my ignorance on Thunderbolt.

From what I understand, the strongest speculation is that Thunderbolt is the throughput bottleneck - meaning they perform about equally - but no one has confirmed or denied that with actual tests or benchmarks. But the Magma will be more future-proofed than the Sonnet once the bottleneck opens with next-gen Thunderbolt.

 

[Eric Santiago]

From what I understand, the strongest speculation is that Thunderbolt is the throughput bottleneck - meaning they perform about equally - but no one has confirmed or denied that with actual tests or benchmarks. But the Magma will be more future-proofed than the Sonnet once the bottleneck opens with next-gen Thunderbolt.

We had this in mind.
Currently using up two of the three with a ROCKET and Tempo SSD Pro loaded with SSDs.
The next move is to add a slim GPU once Apple approves it.
The NVIDIA QK5000 is double height so its all Quadro 4000s for now.