Mac Pro expanded for storage and PCIe slot

[Bob Zelin]

very nice box Jeff, similar to the JMR solution with PCIe slots in it.

What does this have to do with SAN networks ?

bob Zelin

[Eric Hansen]

i’m a bit confused by PCIe expansion. the way i understand it, the Mac Pros have 40 PCIe lanes (slots 1 and 2 are 16x and 3 and 4 are 4x). this particular unit comes with an 8 lane card, which goes into the Mac’s 16 lane slot. it then offers 2 8x slots or 4 4x slots in expansion, while also driving hard drives? but it says its host card is only 8x. where do the extra lanes come from?

e

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Jeffrey Schwartz]

Hi Bob,
Sorry, I wanted to share my experience of the expansion of my Mac Pro for storage and PCIe slot. I visited the Forums at Creative COW, but I wasn’t sure in which forum I should leave my message. Could you please let me know which forum is more appropriate for the message at Creative COW? Thank you so much.

For Eric,
As I know, the Netstor NA380A has a built-in slot expansion chipset that allows PCIe lanes to be expanded.

I installed my AJA KONA LHe card on one of the two PCIe x8 slots on NA380A, so there remains one PCIe x8 slot and four PCIe x4 slots on NA380A. So far as I know, the NA380A comes with an 8 lane card providing a transmission rate of 20 Gbps. The 20 Gbps data rate provided is enough for the KONA LHe card while also driving hard drives. As I know, even two more PCIe cards are added on the remaining PCIe slots on NA380A, the total throughput of the current KONA LHe, the other two PCIe cards, and the driving of hard drives won’t be over 20 Gbps because the x8 slots and the x4 slots are only the specification itself. The things that matter are the actual throughput of each PCIe card you use, so, as I know, even three PCIe cards on NA380A while also driving hard drives are fine with the 8 lane transmission rate 20 Gbps provided by NA380A.

[Eric Hansen]

hey jeff

this is probably the most appropriate forum for your post. we’re the guys that deal with MASSIVE storage and this box fits right in.

so the number of lanes don’t matter so much as the total bandwidth of the source? does this mean that a 8x slot does 20Gbps? would a 16x slot do 40Gbps? sorry for all the questions. i don’t really understand the PCIe structure of the Mac Pro, and now i’m dealing with things like ProTools HD3 and specing out a DaVinci Resolve system and i’m running out of slots so i’m looking at these devices.

btw, the Kona LHe card is 4x, if you ever need to move slots.

e

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Jeffrey Schwartz]

Hi Eric,

Yes, you’re right. The number of lanes don’t matter, as long as the total bandwidth of the source is within 20 Gbps. (a x8 slot does 20 Gbps and a x16 slot does 40 Gbps in PCIe 1.0 spec.) I ever wrote an e-mail to Netstor’s FAE, and he says when a PCIe x8 (8 lanes) RAID card of Areca ARC-1680ix-24 is installed on NA380A, the performance for 24 SATA HDDs is 10 Gbps (1000 MB/s), so we can even plug more PCIe cards on NA380A for the rest 10 Gbps.

The Pro Tools HD 3 you’re using is x1. I saw a user’s review on PCIe expansion from UAD forums, and his UAD-2 Duo DSP accelerator card with x1, similar to your Pro Tools HD 3, works perfectly between Netstor’s TurboBox and a Laptop with only x1 bandwidth. Therefore, I suppose the rest bandwidth of NA380A should be fairly enough for Pro Tools HD3, and maybe you can install many pieces of Pro Tools HD3.

https://studionu.com/uadforums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14185

The FAE also says Netstor will release new 16-drive and 24-drive RAID storage system in PCIe 2.0 spec in first quarter of 2011, so the bandwidth will double then.

Jeff