Thunderbolt

[Matt Geier]

Nigel,

Why spend money on Fiber Channel? You’ll still need all the same things you would with a non TB system……software, management, required redundancy, meta data, etc……

I still think Ethernet prevails in this regard and we all will continue to see the Ethernet market continue to grow when it comes to 10Gb and “SANS” that are simply really good Ethernet networks with really good fast hardware to support their sharing and real time needs…..

🙂

[Steve Modica]

My .02:
There won’t be Thunderbolt switches. switching asics are expensive and the only switched technology that is cheap enough to make a switch you’ll pay for is ethernet (etherNOT never wins).

So, Tbolt will be a PCIE/firewire replacement and probably lead to smaller systems (ala imac) that can have 10Gb and Aja cards without the extra space and cost of a full PCIE card cage.

We’re working on 10Gb on Tbolt now. Lucky for us, the driver work is done. We just have to do the hardware.
Current Tbolt hardware is glitchy and involves many chips. Late summer will bring a smaller chipset that is easier to manage and is more widely available. I don’t think you’ll see wide adoption til we get those.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Bill Dawson]

There is one company doing PCIe networking.

https://www.onestopsystems.com/pcie_superswitch.php

If he can do it with PCIE…I would think you should be able
to do it with Thunderbolt.

Bill

[Steve Modica]

[Bill Dawson] ”
If he can do it with PCIE…I would think you should be able
to do it with Thunderbolt.”

Note the requirement for drivers. All this stuff is easy except for those 🙂 PCIE is switchable and routable except that hosts don’t expect to see multiple initiators on their busses. It’s just like saying “there are infiniband switches out there, so if someone can do it, it should be doable”. Sure it is. You just need all the drivers written. Apple makes things like this particularly difficult since one can never be sure what they are doing to do next (like ditch the Xserve or make Xsan free). It’s a serious gamble to put $1mil in development time into something like that.

Steve

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Bill Dawson]

>Apple makes things like this particularly difficult since one can never be sure what they are doing to do >next

Good point…OK, great point!

Bill

[Michael Kammes]

To rehash this, I was listening to the Digital Production Buzz, and Promise was being interviewed and is in development (and close) to releasing a “SAN link”, which turns Thunderolt into a fibre connection, geared for SAN connectivity.

Food for thought.

~Michael

.: michael kammes mpse
.: senior applications editor . post workflow consultant
.: audio specialist . act fcp . acsr
.: michaelkammes.com
.: twitter: @michaelkammes
.: facebook: /mkammes

Hear me pontificate: Speaking Schedule .

[Thomas Duvrai]

[Matt Geier] “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. “

Hi Matt, you are right: Thunderbolt is very much like FireWire… and FireWire is very much like Ethernet. All three are all true peer to peer networks without hosts or slaves (unlike usb). That’s why using FW for networking is almost as easy as using Ethernet, just daisy-chain your macs together, like you would do with FW drives, or use a FW hub:

In fact Ethernet over Firewire has been possible in Mac OS since I don’t know when, and Microsoft added it as a feature in an XP service pack. It was a hot topic and a well known secret back in the time when people had macs with 400Mbps firewire, and only 100Mbps Ethernet ports.

A picture says a thousand words:

So, in my opinon we could be very close to TB networking, in theory … Oh wait, Apple just released their new TB display with an ethernet port on it’s back 🙂

[Steve Modica]

[Thomas Duvrai] “and FireWire is very much like Ethernet.”

There’s Ethernet and EtherNOT. EtherNOT never wins..
That’s a true statement and has been for a long time.

Fibre Channel was supposed to be a “better” network. it was supposed to be a converged network. It supported IP. Cray and SGI both had drivers. However it went nowhere because ethernet is ubiquitous. You can’t make chips that cheaply. Switch and infrastructure (routers, bridges etc), just aren’t available.

I think the chance for a non-ethernet network protocol is in wireless. That space is still “the wild west” and it’s possible something could happen that creates a happy plateau that forces Ethernet on to the next level.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications

[Oleng Tjioe]

SANLink is out for $799

some other products are out there i suppose, or will be soon (ATTO, Small Tree, Sonnet, …).

i’d love to hear the experiences anybody using Thunderbolt to 10GbE/FC/SAS/eSATA since i’m thinking about using a Mac Mini Server for serving shared storage or serving LTO backups. At least until a new Mac Pro with Thunderbolt support comes out.

[Steve Modica]

I can comment on our testing:

Since Thunderbolt is 4X and our 10Gb cards are 8X, we have noticed a slight reduction in performance. We don’t get Line rate on tests, we get about 80% of that.

Hotplug and unplug are pretty amazing. Once we get it right, you can unplug the thing when stuff is going on. The activity will hang (and eventually timeout), but if you reconnect it recovers. The machine doesn’t panic.

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications