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Sonnet Shipping First New Thunderbolt 2 PCIe Expansion Chassis

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Apr 12, 2001
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Sonnet today announced the first Thunderbolt 2 expansion chassis, allowing owners of late 2013-era MacBook Pro and Mac Pro models to add two or three PCIe cards to their machines.

There are three new options, desktop and rack mount three-slot chassis, plus a two-slot desktop version.

sonnetexpansionchassi.png
The Echo Express III-D, Echo Express III-R, and Echo Express SE II incorporate ultra-fast Thunderbolt 2 technology, which delivers twice the throughput of 10 Gb/sec Thunderbolt and provides sufficient bandwidth to support many of the highest-performance and most-demanding PCIe cards. The new expansion chassis support every kind of Thunderbolt-compatible PCIe card available -- enabling the use of professional video capture, audio interface, 16Gb and 8Gb Fibre Channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, SAS and SATA HBA, and RAID controller cards with Thunderbolt-enabled iMac®, Mac® mini, Mac Pro®, MacBook Air®, and MacBook Pro® computers. Plus, the Sonnet systems' dual Thunderbolt 2 ports support full-bandwidth connectivity with Thunderbolt 2-equipped host computers, full backward compatibility with 10 Gb/sec Thunderbolt-equipped computers and devices, and daisy-chaining of other Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt devices.
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Customers who purchased Thunderbolt 1 equipped expansion chassis can get free upgrades to the Thunderbolt 2 version. All the Thunderbolt 2 chassis are fully backwards-compatible with older Thunderbolt equipped Macs.

The desktop three-slot version is available for $979, the rack mount three-slot is $1,199, and the two-slot desktop is $499.

Article Link: Sonnet Shipping First New Thunderbolt 2 PCIe Expansion Chassis
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/16/sonnet-shipping-thunderbolt-2-expansion/
Does this mean I can add more GPU's to the new Mac Pro??? Can FCPX 10.1 handle 4 GPU's???
 
These dont officially support Graphics Cards, right?

I heard something about intel not approving external GPus andthen driver probs?
 
KindredMAC said:
Is that price for real???
F-that...

Don't see many of these moving...
Click to expand...

Again, these are for professionals.

--

I'm going to assume this can't handle higher-end video cards on PCI Express 3.0? Still not enough bandwidth.
 
I had the same question

eladnova said:
These dont officially support Graphics Cards, right?

I heard something about intel not approving external GPus andthen driver probs?
Click to expand...

That would be a shame, external graphics card could make a MBA even more appealing
 
There's seems to be little information about the mobile rack add on.

What it costs, how you control the drives added to it. It's not clear if it's some kind of solution with SATA and power cable leaving the 3 PCIe slots free for other uses or if you need a SATA card with multiple internal connectors and it just provides drive bays and power.

In their suggested uses, it even shows a configuration with their own 4 port SATA card, yet all the ports are external. That makes no sense.
 
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eladnova said:
These dont officially support Graphics Cards, right?

I heard something about intel not approving external GPus andthen driver probs?
Click to expand...

I've seen Thunderbolt GPU's in similair looking enclosures, but i have heard also that Intel doesn't like the external GPU idea, so I don't suspect that I want will work right out of the box...

the price...too much, sorry :(
 
I'm glad that Sonnet is shipping something in the near future. I'm still waiting for word on their Echo 15. The last update they posted was in October. There are still so few options for versatile T-Bolt docks. Sonnet got this one right, but who knows when -- if ever -- it will ship.
 
MacRumors said:
[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]

yeah not so much for this price you'd BETTER have an income to justify this cost (like editing booth or something). Thunderbolt 1 hasn't even became an affordable option for most and the peripherals are still super expensive. Thunderbolt just seems like it's meant for about 2% of Mac users. I know MANY creative types who don't even bother with it because of the cost of all the extras that you would benefit from by having but that's only high-end editors and whatnot. Definitely not for the general population at all.
Click to expand...
 
The new expansion chassis support every kind of Thunderbolt-compatible PCIe card available -- enabling the use of professional video capture, audio interface, 16Gb and 8Gb Fibre Channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, SAS and SATA HBA, and RAID controller cards with Thunderbolt-enabled iMac®, Mac® mini, Mac Pro®, MacBook Air®, and MacBook Pro® computers.
Click to expand...

Why aren't graphics cards compatible?
 
These aren't built for GPU's. Though they can work for a GPU.
The card has to have a thunderbolt-aware driver. (driver code has to specify the resources they require and support hot-plugging)

You might see someone use one to add in a Quadro or something to a Mac mini or iMac for high end GPU applications.

I work in the audio industry. People use them to add DSP processing cards to Mac Pro, iMac, Mac mini. Usually Avid HDX cards. Sonnet and Magma both sell a lot of chassis to video people, they'll put a BlackMagic or other capture card in there, and sometimes a storage controller...then they have video ingest and a working drive in one box.
 
ActionableMango said:
Why aren't graphics cards compatible?
Click to expand...

There really should a Thunderbolt usage for beginners FAQ on here somewhere and if there is, it should be linked on every thunderbolt article for easy reference.

Thunderbolt2 offers 2 x 10Gbit/s channels combined. Thunderbolt offers them as seperate channels. Neither of those speeds offer anywhere near the bandwidth of a 16xPCie card and even then, most higher end GPUs are double-wide and need internal power. You'd end up using 2 slots for 1 card, leaving only 1 PCIe slot for other uses and then cripple the card with bandwidth that doesn't even come close to 4xPCIe.
 
4God said:
Does this mean I can add more GPU's to the new Mac Pro??? Can FCPX 10.1 handle 4 GPU's???
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt 2 certainly won't support PCIex16. It doesn't have the throughput.

Your GPU would have to be PCIex8, and you would need to somehow get driver support for it within OS X. In other words, no.

Maybe external GPUs will finally be viable when Thunderbolt 3 is released.
 
4God said:
Does this mean I can add more GPU's to the new Mac Pro??? Can FCPX 10.1 handle 4 GPU's???
Click to expand...

Doubt it. Getting support for dual GPUs is going to be hard enough.

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barkmonster said:
There really should a Thunderbolt usage for beginners FAQ on here somewhere and if there is, it should be linked on every thunderbolt article for easy reference.

Thunderbolt2 offers 2 x 10Gbit/s channels combined. Thunderbolt offers them as seperate channels. Neither of those speeds offer anywhere near the bandwidth of a 16xPCie card and even then, most higher end GPUs are double-wide and need internal power. You'd end up using 2 slots for 1 card, leaving only 1 PCIe slot for other uses and then cripple the card with bandwidth that doesn't even come close to 4xPCIe.
Click to expand...

Is there a simple data on average bandwidth use for 1x, 2x, 3x, and 4x GPU setups?
 
4God said:
Does this mean I can add more GPU's to the new Mac Pro??? Can FCPX 10.1 handle 4 GPU's???
Click to expand...

Honestly, not really. There is a diminishing return do to the bandwidth. The more you add the lower bandwidth each card has available to it. Maybe if they hadn't dropped to 1 cpu and cutted bandwidth. Now if they released a dual cpu mac pro with twice the lanes and more bandwidth for TB2...
 
macrogeek said:
These aren't built for GPU's. Though they can work for a GPU.
The card has to have a thunderbolt-aware driver. (driver code has to specify the resources they require and support hot-plugging)

You might see someone use one to add in a Quadro or something to a Mac mini or iMac for high end GPU applications.

I work in the audio industry. People use them to add DSP processing cards to Mac Pro, iMac, Mac mini. Usually Avid HDX cards. Sonnet and Magma both sell a lot of chassis to video people, they'll put a BlackMagic or other capture card in there, and sometimes a storage controller...then they have video ingest and a working drive in one box.
Click to expand...

But, what if you plug in the card before you boot up the system? Then, hot swapping support wouldn't be needed?
 
barkmonster said:
There really should a Thunderbolt usage for beginners FAQ on here somewhere and if there is, it should be linked on every thunderbolt article for easy reference.

Thunderbolt2 offers 2 x 10Gbit/s channels combined. Thunderbolt offers them as seperate channels. Neither of those speeds offer anywhere near the bandwidth of a 16xPCie card and even then, most higher end GPUs are double-wide and need internal power. You'd end up using 2 slots for 1 card, leaving only 1 PCIe slot for other uses and then cripple the card with bandwidth that doesn't even come close to 4xPCIe.
Click to expand...

Doesn't TB2 support channel bonding? Even without bonding the channels you still have 10Gbit which approx equal to PCIeX4. There's been several benchmarks done on earlier GPU cards with different PCIeXx connections and unless you're gaming at 1024x768, the loss in fps from going from PCIeX16 down to PCIeX4 is minimal at higher resolutions. The lack of a TB2 to GPU adapter is purely political from Intel and possibly Apple's standpoint as the ability to plug in a GTX780 to upgrade your 2012 rMBP would keep upgrade dollars out of their hands as the lowliest i5 in rMBP is more than capable of driving a AMD 290 or Nvidia GTX 780

EDIT:
HERE
is a great article, looks like AMD cards take a smaller hit than Nvidia cards with <x16 PCIex
 
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If you have a mac with two TB ports, I don't really understand why one would buy the three-slot when you can get two of the two-slots for barely any more money… ?

Great that these exist though.

H2SO4 said:
Shame it doesn't actually complement the Mac Pro.
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Yeah, they should have made it look like a stormtrooper! :)
 
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