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iMacs and Fusion Drives
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[Christian Schumacher] “Then I presented a recent test of a 8-bay RAID inclosure that shows Thunderbolt clipping at 1000MB/s. That should be relevant when discussing “bigger than HD”, no?”
Again, it depends. If you’re working on uncompressed 4k, perhaps. But who is doing that? Not many.
4k ProRes 4444 is 250MB/sec. 1GB/sec is plenty of overhead. it all depends on what you need to do. Thunderbolt is plenty for “bigger than HD” in most cases.
[Christian Schumacher] “And the thing is, Thunderbolt 2 isn’t capable of port multiplying either. So, I think Apple will have to prop up their software technologies in order to stay relevant in the content creation arena.”
No, but you can daisy chain, why would you need port-multiplication? I think that you have to take a really good look at Thunderbolt, realize that it will fit most content creation needs really really well at least for the foreseeable future. 4k broadcast is a long way off, 4k film editing is not super necessary. 4k uncompressed finishing is about the only practical reason I can think of where TBolt might be a constraint, as well as giant media pools.
The barefeats article mentions the top speed of 1,350MB/sec. I don’t know anyone, personally, who would shy away from that and call it not good enough.
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[Christian Schumacher] “J, I was referencing the use of 8 SSDs in a RAID inclosure over TB. It IS a waste of money. This is the second enclosure I believe they tested and had the same conclusions. Is it some extreme corner case? An 8-bay RAID?”
You have to go Raid 0 HDD in order to get the same read (playback) speed as Raid5 SSD.
It’s not necessarily a waste of money to everyone, is my point, especially when you start to look at connecting more than one computer to that very same storage and factor in Raid5 protection. You will want that raid to go as fast as possible and have the most protection when multiple people start drawing from it.
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If you go the SSD route, and maybe others can help me with my memory, but the SSD in the current iMac is not the same as the SSD in the new Macbook Air. I’ve never seen this kind of SSD performance like the air gives. I would want that performance in my iMac – but if the iMac doesn’t offer that version of SSD yet, then I’d wait till it did.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “4k ProRes 4444 is 250MB/sec. 1GB/sec is plenty of overhead. it all depends on what you need to do. Thunderbolt is plenty for “bigger than HD” in most cases.”
OK, but if anybody needs something like more than 6 streams and…But, wait! Who in hell does that, huh? Shoot a few hours of footage? None that I know of. Apply effects? That’s only in Hollywood, sure! /end sarcasm/
[Jeremy Garchow] ” why would you need port-multiplication?”
When the new workstation from Apple arrives, Thunderbolt is going to be the only way in MacOS to connect all of your computer monitors, video/audio gear and storage… And I don’t think there’s plenty of overhead there. That’s why you’re going to have a dual firepro. And that’s also why Apple will step up their game in the software side.
[Jeremy Garchow] ”
The barefeats article mentions the top speed of 1,350MB/sec. I don’t know anyone, personally, who would shy away from that and call it not good enough.”I think that is when using two devices on two TB ports, which is out of the same TB controller, you can get to that but is shared with each device (meaning 675 for each of them) If you want a storage device in maximum speed over TB, is going to be clipped at less than 1000MB/s. That’s why using an 8-bay enclosure filled with SSDs won’t benefit TB users. On the other hand, 4-year technology from Apple can handle that, it is called a PCIe Mac Pro, and that was surely good enough to keep Apple at the spotlight in content creation. But it remains to be seen if the same will be applied to the new paradigm, software wise and hardware wise.
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[Christian Schumacher] “OK, but if anybody needs something like more than 6 streams and…But, wait! Who in hell does that, huh? Shoot a few hours of footage? None that I know of. Apply effects? That’s only in Hollywood, sure! /end sarcasm/”
If you are talking about FCPX, it has an awesome Proxy system. There’s even a multicam pref to create proxies as soon as you make a multicam clip.
And when you play six streams of 4k, it’s not playing the full bandwidth 4k. You can check this on any computer with Activity Monitor. No sarcasm needed. Also, I don’t know why you’d realistically edit a 6 stream multicam in 4k resolution.
[Christian Schumacher] “When the new workstation from Apple arrives, Thunderbolt is going to be the only way in MacOS to connect all of your computer monitors, video/audio gear and storage… And I don’t think there’s plenty of overhead there. That’s why you’re going to have a dual firepro. And that’s also why Apple will step up their game in the software side.”
And Thunderbolt will be plenty…I promise.
[Christian Schumacher] “I think that is when using two devices on two TB ports, which is out of the same TB controller, you can get to that but is shared with each device (meaning 675 for each of them) If you want a storage device in maximum speed over TB, is going to be clipped at less than 1000MB/s. That’s why using an 8-bay enclosure filled with SSDs won’t benefit TB users. On the other hand, 4-year technology from Apple can handle that, it is called a PCIe Mac Pro, and that was surely good enough to keep Apple at the spotlight in content creation. But it remains to be seen if the same will be applied to the new paradigm, software wise and hardware wise.”
We are starting to go in circles.
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Also all the figures mentioned here are reffering to Thunderbolt 1, the MacPro will have six ports of Thunderbolt 2. We know that each port will have at least 2X the bandwidth. We however don’t know how / if the ports share bandwidth between one another in some way (I’d think not). So, connecting:
– 2X video displays to 2 ports
– 1X disk array running at 1500 MB/s or so to 1 port
– 1X video i/o to 1 port…mot sure what else is needed? You still have 2 ports to spare on top of the native HDMI output.
The only thing TB2 will be limited in some way is when dealing with extreme processing cards and external GPU’s. But there is a big might be there.
Not sure what all this has to do with iMacs and Fusion Drives either… 🙂
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[Erik Lindahl] “Not sure what all this has to do with iMacs and Fusion Drives either… :)”
As usual, it’s my fault! 😀
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[Jeremy Garchow] “If you are talking about FCPX, it has an awesome Proxy system. There’s even a multicam pref to create proxies as soon as you make a multicam clip. And when you play six streams of 4k, it’s not playing the full bandwidth 4k. You can check this on any computer with Activity Monitor. No sarcasm needed. Also, I don’t know why you’d realistically edit a 6 stream multicam in 4k resolution.”
Multicam isn’t the only scenario where you need multiple streams. A dissolve requires two streams. Any compositing operation requires at least two streams.
That said, I think six streams is probably plenty for most editorial needs.
I guess we have to wait for the hardware to ship, but TB2 looks promising in getting Thunderbolt RAIDs up to where the 8x PCIe RAID controllers are today.
In response to the larger point, I don’t see HDDs going away any time soon. SDD has HDD beat on performance, but it has a long way to go before it catches up on price per capacity. Apple’s Fusion drive is a very clever approach to gaining the advantages of both.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “Multicam isn’t the only scenario where you need multiple streams. A dissolve requires two streams. Any compositing operation requires at least two streams.”
It depends on the system, but all of this is really easy to track if you use Mac computers. You can open Activity Monitor and watch the Disk Activity. It will give you a real time graph of how much bandwidth is being pushed through the computer. Two streams of video does not necessarily require double the bandwidth. 6 streams of multicam certainly does not require 6 times the bandwidth. It requires more bandwidth than one stream, yes, but it is not 1:1.
Still, complaining about 1GB/sec being a hard limit seems a little far fetched.
1 streams of regular ProRes at 4k is 65 ish MB/sec. So even if full bandwidth is required, 390 MB/sec is the needed bandwidth. You could do 2 simultaneous 4k 6 stream ProRes multicam edits on one thunderbolt Raid that runs at 1GB/sec.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Two streams of video does not necessarily require double the bandwidth. 6 streams of multicam certainly does not require 6 times the bandwidth. It requires more bandwidth than one stream, yes, but it is not 1:1.”
Voodoo bandwithonomics?
Caching, proxies and render files lower bandwidth requirements, and IO may be bursty, throwing off sampled measurements, but math is a cruel mistress. How can you move two streams around a system within less bandwidth than the sum of their bandwidths?
There are loads of other factors like IOPS and latency, but that’s left as an exercise to the reader.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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