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CUDA Acceleration Via Thunderbolt
Theoretically, when Sonnet comes out with the Echo Express PCIe 2.0 Expansion Chassis; will I be able to put an approved Nvidia card in it and get CUDA acceleration when plugged into my Macbook Pro?
Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style! -
8 Replies
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I’d say unlikely: Thunderbolt’s data bandwidth is only 1/8th of a standard Gen 16x PCIe slot; probably inadequate for Premiere Pro purposes.
Alex (DV411)
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[Alex Gerulaitis] “I’d say unlikely: Thunderbolt’s data bandwidth is only 1/8th of a standard Gen 16x PCIe slot; probably inadequate for Premiere Pro purposes.”
Sonnet’s site says this:
“High Bandwidth—x16 (x4 mode) 1GB/s PCIe 2.0 slot perfect for special-purpose PCIe cards for video capture, Fibre Channel, 10-Gigabit Ethernet, digital audio, RAID control, multiple screen video, etc.”Sounds like it runs at 4x…?
Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style! -
[Jason Jenkins] “Sounds like it runs at 4x…?”
I was wondering about it too, and actually was off in my estimate of 1/8th of the bandwidth: looks like it’s 1:6.4.
PCIe Gen2 is 500MB/s one-way (1GB/s full duplex) per lane. 16 lanes – 8GBs or 64Gbs one way – vs. 10Gbs on TB.
Alex (DV411)
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It could be an alright solution for the current mac laptops that have all ati or intel GPUs, with the bandwidth limited maybe a midrange GPU without as many CUDA cores could work.
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In searching an alternative to add a Cuda card for my iMac I found this thread, and upon further research I found this post on the Sonnet website:
No, the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 is not Thunderbolt-compatible. Apple and Intel have prescribed specific connectivity standards for products with Thunderbolt technology interfaces. These include drivers that are recognized by Thunderbolt and allow the product to connect and disconnect while the computer is running (hot plug/unplug). Products with Thunderbolt interfaces are tested by Intel and Apple and certified as compatible with these standards.
For PCIe expansion chassis to function correctly in this Thunderbolt-connectivity paradigm, the drivers for PCIe cards used in the chassis must also be updated to support these requirements. In most cases, each card manufacturer is responsible for updating the drivers for their cards. For the Quadro, it is Apple that controls the driver in OS X.
Intel has required all PCIe chassis manufacturers to agree to list only compatible cards that have been tested to support these standards. Apple has determined that for now, there are several technical reasons why it is not a good idea for a GPU card–including the Quadro–to connect over Thunderbolt. Therefore, GPU cards do not have Thunderbolt-compatible drivers. Until Thunderbolt-compatible drivers are released for GPU cards, they will not work over Thunderbolt.
So it looks that, at least for now, we’re out of luck.
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Thanks for the research David, good info.
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Looks like there’s some hacky options out there to force GPUS to work over thunderbolt https://mediapros.co.uk/portfolio-view/thunderbolterizer/
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Just wondering if anyone knows of any updates regarding using external GPUs with a Macbook Retina via Thunderbolt now that we’re running Thunderbolt 2 and Yosemite. Are there any cards available that will work with Premiere over Thunderbolt and improve performance?
I’ve had a hard enough time getting Yosemite to play nice with the high-performance CUDA drivers for my internal GPU (https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/964588#964633), so I’m not hugely optimistic but figure there have to be some options coming to market, at least intended for the Mac Pro, if not iMac/Macbook.
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