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Someone explain this…
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Here’s trip down memory lane when we talked about this 1.5 years ago. I apologize for getting punchy, I was all alone on a Thunderbot raft in a sea of pcie cards.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/24438“
Not to hop on the bandwagon but I was that raft too.
Some snippets from a couple of my posts in that thread:
“First off, I don’t see how anyone can watch that demo and not be impressed. 4k playback, screen recording and recording a feed from an external camera via SDI all happening concurrently on a MacBook Air! Seriously?!? ”
and
“Given the desire for clean lines and simplicity I’m sure there are mock-ups of devices at Apple that don’t have anything but USB 2 and ThB ports.”
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[Andrew Kimery] “I think you misunderstood something in the video. The RED Rocket card (in an enclosure connected via ThB) is allowing him to do all of that because it’s processing the RED footage. Before he enabled the RED Rocket card the computer couldn’t even playback the footage.”
His point, though, is that in order to use a Rocket at 4K via Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt needs the bandwidth to handle 4K — uncompressed 4K RGB, since that’s the decoded signal the Rocket is sending back. And if it’s that fast, why is the lack of internal slots such a big deal?
He’s pretty much right. First-generation Thunderbolt is a little iffy for 4K, but Thunderbolt 2 should manage it easily. The truth is, with Thunderbolt 2’s bandwidth, the list of real-world use cases where you still need PCIe is pretty slim. It mostly does just come down to GPUs.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Andrew Kimery] “I think you misunderstood something in the video. The RED Rocket card (in an enclosure connected via ThB) is allowing him to do all of that because it’s processing the RED footage. Before he enabled the RED Rocket card the computer couldn’t even playback the footage.”
Right! So… it works? I am reading a lot of ‘need’ when it comes to PCI slots, but I’m not seeing a lot of evidence other than the specs on the cable. I want to see a set-up the melts that sucka!! Here’s an example of a pretty powerful peripheral doing just fine with the TB limitations, so here’s a positive. I want a negative demonstration, too!
See, the Mac Pro is the next step up for me. As a tool, are those saying TB, no.. ThB (I do like that better) isn’t going to cut it, in the right? Will I have buyer’s remorse at year 2.5? Or will this work for me? Indications are I’ll be fine.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Not to hop on the bandwagon but I was that raft too.”
How could I forget?
You are my rock of Gibraltar.
Craig Seemen pretty much nailed it, too.
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[Chris Kenny] ” The truth is, with Thunderbolt 2’s bandwidth, the list of real-world use cases where you still need PCIe is pretty slim. It mostly does just come down to GPUs.
“Agreed. I thought I said as much in my first post. Maybe I worded it poorly?
[Bobby Mosca] “I want to see a set-up the melts that sucka!! Here’s an example of a pretty powerful peripheral doing just fine with the TB limitations, so here’s a positive. I want a negative demonstration, too!”
I don’t have a video of a negative example but I can’t imagine trying to run a 16x GPU full tilt via a 4x or 8x pipe would yield good results.
Most editors aren’t going to run into situations that ThB 2 can’t solve. I’ve been guessing Apple is going ditch PCI slots and internal expansion for that reason since 2011.
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Here is a guy running an external GPU over TBolt:
https://www.coreyrobson.com/post/52451664259/thunderbolt-gpu-is-alive-and-mostly-well
Not exactly negative, but honest.
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Yeah great review from Grant – glad he said what he did even though I’m sure he’s under heavy NDA. Hopefully we’ll get more in depth info well before the launch since they’ve given us this very un-Apple-like “sneek peek”.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
Could the Thunderbolt channels be combined for external video cards or other peripherals?
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It works, partially. The RedRocket card runs crippled. It’s not at full capacity. Red Epics record 5K, and 6K in the near future, and then there’s RedRocket X, a new Pci 3.0 card. You would need at least 80Gbps to get the most of the card, that also speeds rendering a lot. You can get the preview to work at least in one video layer, but not the high speed renders.
Santiago Martí
http://www.robotrojo.com.ar
Red One M-X, Red Epic X, Red Pro Primes, Adobe CS6, Assimilate Scratch -
[Bobby Mosca] “And someone mentioned 3D on another thread, and how they really wanted 24 cores. Aren’t they doing a workshop with Pixar tomorrow? If Sully’s hair isn’t taxing enough, I don’t know what is.”
Don’t be fooled by Apple’s appeal-to-authority marketing.
Pixar sells RenderMan, which runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. While RenderMan will certainly run well on a single-socket 12-core CPU, it will also certainly run better on a pair of 12-core CPUs.
3D is always limited by computer performance, and this new Mac Pro will have a lower performance than a Windows or Linux PC that you can stuff with additional CPUs, GPUs, and RAM (if you are willing to pay).
This doesn’t mean the new Mac Pro will be a bad computer — it will surely be a very nice computer. It just won’t be anywhere close to the best computer for some kinds of work, 3D among them, Pixar’s presence at WWDC notwithstanding.
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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