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New Mac Pro
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[Chris Tomberlin] “What about that $4k Red Rocket card? Will TB2 be enough for that to still be useful?”
Yes. But likely not enough for RR-X.
Colorist | Online Editor | Post Super | VFX Artist | BD Author
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Apple has not, up to this point, supported discrete GPUs external to Mac Book Pro or iMac – through Thunderbolt or ExpressCard 34/54. It’s a BIOS support issue, which I’m sure would be a simple update for any Apple OSX user, if Apple choose to support external graphics processing. What makes you think they will with the upcoming new Mac Pro? (Anybody know of a release date?)
Seems like an interesting product, if you can accept that all of the I/O drivers for any current OSX-supported PCIe adapter will need to be re-written for Thunderbolt / Thunderbolt 2. Your standard PCIe drivers for OSX-supported cards are not supported through Thunderbolt.
Also, assuming Apple sticks to it’s policy of not allowing a GPU(s) to be attached externally to the Thunderbolt port, what happens in 6-12 months when NVIDIA comes out with either a graphics card(s) which are double the speed of the AMD cards (which appear to be integrated into the system and non-upgradeable), or if next-gen CUDA blows the doors off of OpenCL? Looks to me like Apple has found a way to force OSX professional users who depend on hardware acceleration to upgrade every 12-18 months. Clever
Eric Fiegehen
Director, Visualization & GPU Compute Solutions
Cubix Corporation
ericc@cubix.com
https://www.cubix.com -
Damn Eric! I was hoping you guys had a Tbolt-2 Expansion chassis ready for the new MacPro release that would handle this! 🙂
Dwaine Maggart
Blackmagic Design DaVinci Support -
😉 Don’t be too shocked when we do release one later in the year (NOT an official company statement, BTW). I would, however, be shocked when / if Apple supports external discrete graphics controllers (AMD or NVIDIA) connected via TB or TB2.
This one drawback kept us from committing to TB in the past, but we would commit to it regardless of this deficiency if Resolve users out there are hungry enough for a Cubix-built TB expansion device which would allow them to reliably run 1-2 RED Rockets, ATTO, and other PCIe-based devices that could accelerate Resolve performance beyond what this new Mac Pro would be able to accomplish out of the box.
Eric
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there is possibility that RR would be obsolete tech by then if you read all the posts around ?
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Margus
https://iconstudios.eu
https://vimeo.com/iconstudioseu/videosDaVinci 9, OSX 10.7.4
MacPro 5.1 2×2,93 24GB
GTX 470 / Quadro 4000
Multibridge 2 Pro -
Chris – TB2 does not even come close to PCIe Gen3 x16’s 160Gbps data transfer rate. Will most Mac Pro users need this much bandwidth? Probably not. Would most Resolve users make use of 160Gbps data transfer rates if their host system supports it? Probably yes, when Resolve 10 is released (I’ll need to check with DaVinci on this question).
I think it will be interesting to see what, if any, influence the PCIe adapter partners and current Mac Pro customers will add to any revisions made between now and later this year.
Eric
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TB2 = Half the speed of PCIe Gen 1.1 x16, I believe, which was 40Gbps bi-directional. PCIe Gen2 x16 = 80Gbps (Xpander Desktop 4, Xpander Desktop Elite specified transfer rates). PCIe Gen3 x16 Xpander data transfers will be at the theoretical 160Gbps, or close, depending on OS and host system overhead.
Eric
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Eric- How about you guys make a piggyback PCIe3 on the SSD connector, so we can drill a hole in the (plastic?) case, and run it to the Cubix…
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[John Sellars] “Eric- How about you guys make a piggyback PCIe3 on the SSD connector, so we can drill a hole in the (plastic?) case, and run it to the Cubix…”
Ha! Great idea! Well except that the PCIe SSD slot is a single lane slot. 🙁
Colorist | Online Editor | Post Super | VFX Artist | BD Author
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so… dear apple, about your new mac pro:
how I connect my non-apple dvi displays?
and that SATA internal disk that the client bring to me?
wow… yes I have a usb2 reader for this…how I connect my Optical Fiber RAID?
and If I need to install a CUDA card for some specific application?
yes I can buy a cubic with a lot of PCIe…or I can offer to my girlfriend a nice holidays I build a hackintosh to work.
with love
m
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