Thunderbolt

[Matt Geier]

Hi Nigel,

Here at Small Tree we get this question a fair amount.
We’ve talked to Intel and Apple about it at various levels. Here’s our take;

I’ve heard from (name of company and source removed) that Thunderbolt is primarily a good replacement (for the time being) for Direct Attached eSATA and Firewire or USB devices.

Thunderbolt is very much like firewire. It’s going to be a local storage bus. It will also be more since it can support peripherals like a PCIE bus.

The key in this is to know that Thunderbolt will not replace networking. You will just see networking peripherals develop.

Ethernet is still going to be around for ages to come! There are two things we say here; In terms of networking, It’s either using Ethernet or it’s using an EtherNOT, and Thunderbolt is an “EtherNOT”

I hope this helps you a little.

Regards,

Matt Geier
Small Tree

[Nigel Thompson]

Hi Matt:
I understand the technology. and its MUCH better to have that king of connectivity at those speeds……IMHO

But im really hoping some nut cases (maybe Small tree LOL) develops a switch which blows everything wide open. building a render farm will be easy squeezy at that point.
Was about to drop a pile of cash last year for a fibre SAN but held off because Pro avio was changing models and the new ones werent readily available at the time. (didnt want to buy the old stuff)

Then heard about thunderbolt and held off completely because we were making out “ok”…..
But ill need it by august so hoping something happens by then

Nigel

HVX200, RED ONE, FCS and more,
High End, Production & Post Production
in the Caribbean
http://www.bistt.com

[Alex Gerulaitis]

I am with Matt on this: it will never happen outside of nutcases, like it will never happen with HDMI-based shared storage. It’s just a different type of a connection and transmission protocol – a marriage of HDMI (well, DisplayPort) and PCIe, that is NOT designed for networking.

What you might see if a TB-to-10GigE adapter, or TB-to-8Gbit-Fiber, or TB-to-PCIe expansion chassis where you can stick multiple HBAs and other PCIe cards.

Alex (DV411)

[Nigel Thompson]

Well the fibre thing is my question exactly…

Will the fibre implementation of tbolt ad more capablities like networking……
This is just so interesting its amazing.

Cuz since there is a video layer as well as data, you can stick this connection into a camera and get uncompressed 444 straight to a drive and view it footage at the same time, something like a convergent Gemini.

its just a wild piece of tech that may have quite a few possibilities in the future

HVX200, RED ONE, FCS and more,
High End, Production & Post Production
in the Caribbean
http://www.bistt.com

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Nigel Thompson] “its just a wild piece of tech that may have quite a few possibilities in the future”

True, that. 🙂

That said, I have yet to hear of a working add-on TB PCIe adapter – to me, that is even a bigger roadblock to its acceptance than availability of TB-based storage boxes. What’s the point of having all this wonderful technology when you can’t connect it to a current Mac Pro?

I did see one such prototype adapter at G-Tech booth at NAB. Matrox’ release of a PCIe-to-Tbolt adapters is also reassuring. Expensive though!

Alex (DV411)

[Nigel Thompson]

Really !? WHat are the prices like ?

HVX200, RED ONE, FCS and more,
High End, Production & Post Production
in the Caribbean
http://www.bistt.com

[Matt Geier]

Guys,

In terms of TB Transfer Rates, I think the key here is that it’s offering 10Gbit to the device it’s connecting to, over a PCI-E bus.

This really is no different then having local attached storage now, other then price really. (This is an opinion of myself…..)

There’s an analogy that I like to use here. Just because you have a wire that’s able to go 280MB/sec (10Gb Link under AFP), doesn’t mean because you are doing a video stream, or two video streams that it will actually be moving that fast….

It’s just like our cars and trucks…they are all able to go over 100 miles per hour because the speedometer tells us they can, but do we ever drive them that fast on the highway? No. There are always special circumstances however that can move at “line rate performance” like a race track for example.

Remember that Ethernet TODAY is offering FCoE, (Yes….you read right…) Fibre Channel over Ethernet…..your TB connection will not move 800MB/sec …. but you may see it go a couple of hundred MB/sec or whatever is going to be allowed by O/S, and devices it’s working with. (Remember, it’s a 10Gb link yes, but you’re always at the mercy of the lowest common denominator on transfer speeds…..for example the drive in your Mac pro will not go as fast as 4 drives RAIDED on a direct attache storage box…)

Thunderbolt is wonderful technology replacement or upgrade from E-SATA, Firewire etc….but it’s not going to be any kind of match for the Shared Networking you’ll be needing for 2-3-4-5+ editors to share a single storage location over a network in real time …..

It may develop into that some day, but it’s not today, and it’s not six months from now, and probably not 1 year from now either.

If you want to edit video in shared environment, and you want to do it from more then 1 Mac at a time, together, on the same network, on the same storage, over the same switch, etc….Thunderbolt is not that answer.

Just my 0.02 of course, but I’m sure there’s plenty of info, people, and data to back it up.

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Nigel,
I know exactly what you want. You want to be able to have a system so simple, that you can have a Thunderbolt switch, and without having to configure anything, you can just plug in your big Thunderbolt drive array into the switch, along with 10 computer, and instantly everyone is networked together, and all sharing the same drive array, and no one had to do anything other than plug in your Thunderbolt cable to this Thunderbolt switch.

Keep dreaming. The entire business market (mostly run by intel) is based on an ethernet infrastructure. Intel likes it this way. Intel is the leader in 10Gig ethernet development. They know that insurance companies, phone companies, and other big corporations have HUGE networks, and these networks are installed by Telecom industry technicians that understand copper ethernet networks. This is why there is such a huge push towards 10Gig ethernet on motherboards for PC’s. Our little industry is very unimportant in the big picture. The generic PC that HP and Dell make will ultimately have 10Gig copper ethernet ports on them, so that existing offices can readily upgrade to a standard infrastructure that is already in place. It would be a LONG TIME before entire office buildings would be retooled for a Thunderbolt infrastructure. (Do you see entire buildings, or cable companies besides verizon running Fibre everywhere ? ).

Thunderbolt is SCSI for 2011. And even if I am 100% wrong about everything, do you even question that in 3 – 4 years, the current Thunderbolt will be completely outdated, and a new standard will be in place, that is faster, cooler, and easier ?

For the single user, with an iMAC, and does not want to deal with anything other than running his apps for his small business, Thunderbolt is a fantastic solution. But this is not a facility solution.

Bob Zelin

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Looking at it another way, Thunderbolt will eventually allow you to connect very fast storage devices to a single system – MBP, iMac (now) and MacPro in the future (hopefully).

I think for facilities with multiple systems, a combined approach (some shared, somemlocal) is more productive rather than placing everything In one large shared box.

One of the reasons for sharing storage amongst multiple users is that fast storage is expensive so you share it to share costs. TBolt makes fast storage which will eventually be economical enough for you to get many of them, even one per system. And then use a simpler GigE or 10GigE network to share only the stuff that needs to be shared.

At a TV facility with 25 FCPs I recently did an analysis of what is needed by everyone and what is needed only by some. So all thr systems were provided with internal storage as well. This made the network and the shared drive faster than with everything in one place.

The editors even intelligently managed to switch the render files between local and shared storage from project to project and the main shared storage is all the happier for it.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Sebastien Bertrand]

There is already on the market some PCIe switches (like Accusys exasan) that are usable in a SAN infrastructure. As far as I know, those never really took off on the market so far, but they allow you to build a high speed SAN without fibre channel. You save a little bit on the fibre channel adapters and switches, but you still need all the components needed in a shared SAN (metadata servers, shared filesystem)

It would not be surprised to see the PCIe switches manufacturers coming up with a thunderbold switch using similar technologies, but it doesn’t mean the market will be there to back it. It will probably take a long time before those switches give you the flexibility and reliability of fibre channel switches.

If you want to build a SAN in August 2011, go fibre channel. And if your bandwidth requirements to your storage are so high, just use 2 8Gb fibre channel links from each hosts. You will need a lot of spindles to fill those links though.

BTW, Brocade just launched their 16Gb/s fibre channel switches, and the Qlogic ones are already announced.

Sebastien Bertrand
Ordigraphe Inc.
Toronto, Canada
https://www.ordigraphe.com