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10 Gb Ethernet for PCIe G5?

L

lastmile

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 10, 2008
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I was just reading up on 10 Gb ethernet cards for the cMP and wondered if there were any that worked with the PCIe G5s.

There are flashed Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt PCIe cards on eBay that the seller claims will work in a G5. I’m doubtful so I’m double checking that. If they work I suppose a Thunderbolt to 10Gb Ethernet adapter would work though that would be more than I want to spend on a project.

I do have a 8-drive external SAS array so saturating a 10 Gb card is not a problem.
 
lastmile said:
There are flashed Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt PCIe cards on eBay that the seller claims will work in a G5.
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I’ve seen them. The listing also says Thunderbolt functionality requires macOS 10.12, so there’s no way to use it with the G5, not in Mac OS X ≤10.5 at least.

lastmile said:
If they work I suppose a Thunderbolt to 10Gb Ethernet adapter would work […]
Click to expand...
The OS on the G5 would need a driver for the Ethernet chip in the adapter as well.
 
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Thanks. I was surprised to see G5 in those eBay listings and doubted that it was true.

I have some newer Macs with Thunderbolt but am also very much stuck in the past when it comes to playing around with my computers. I tend to take the “new” tech for granted on the machines running the current MacOS and never remember minimum OS requirements though I saw that 10.12 requirement in the listing.
 
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Thunderbolt functionality means Thunderbolt Target Display Mode, Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode, hot plug. Those are impossible to achieve without creating your own Thunderbolt drivers.

Other features of the Thunderbolt add-in card might be easier to implement.
- USB 3.1 gen 2: create a USB XHCI driver for PowerPC (see the GenericUSBXHCI project - can it be ported to PowerPC and Mac OS X 10.5?)
- PCIe tunnelling: create an Open Firmware nvramrc script to enable PCI tunnelling before Mac OS X boots. If the script is too large, then make it a file and load it from Open Firmware.

Mac OS X 10.5 probably doesn't have a driver for 10Gb Ethernet PCIe adapters. Check the Hackintosh drivers - is there one for 10 GbE? Or 2.5GbE?. Maybe one of them can be ported to PowerPC.

Power Mac G5 is limited to PCIe gen 1 which is 2.5 GT/s = 2 Gbps = 250 MB/s. A 10Gb Ethernet adapter might be limited to < 10 Gbps unless you get one that has more than four or more PCIe lanes (unlikely), or you use a PCIe bridge. A Thunderbolt add-in card can act as a PCIe bridge if you can get PCIe tunnelling to work.
 
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lastmile said:
Thanks. I was surprised to see G5 in those eBay listings and doubted that it was true.
Click to expand...

Irritatingly, eBay listings are notoriously inaccurate and misleading - even for the most basic of items. In some cases I've had to contact the seller and request written confirmation about the item so that if I went ahead and made the purchase and I received an inaccurately described item, there would be a record of the conversation.

I found an A1181 which had been listed as an iMac...
 
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Amethyst1 said:
That's harmless. I hate listings that state the item is working... but when I go ask whether a specific but basic feature is working I get a reply that goes like "I'm not familiar with the item so I dunno". Yeah, right.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, I encountered that when trying to establish whether an 13" MacBook Pro was the mid 2010 C2D model or the 2011 version. I instructed the seller to check for the presence of a lightning symbol on the left-hand side of the machine. They replied back that they'd need to ask a friend to do it as they had no idea what I was talking about.

Ok...
 
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Thanks for the info. I figured going beyond gigabit on the G5 was unlikely (at least not easily).

You can make out well on eBay with misidentified items if you can confirm the items what you think it is through pictures and/or communicating with the seller. I’ve gotten very good at spotting things I’m hunting for but no luck lately picking a 1.5 GHz G4 Mac Mini out of all the listings I’ve checked.

People still list G5s as Mac Pros and vise versa. Not too long ago you could save a lot of money on a poorly listed 4,1 or 5,1. Not so much now that prices have really dropped.
 
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joevt said:
Power Mac G5 is limited to PCIe gen 1 which is 2.5 GT/s = 2 Gbps = 250 MB/s.
Click to expand...

I think this is not true. Sonnet cards are supported on G5s and specs claim 6 Gbps. And real-life measurements seem to show a higher speed than 250 MB/s.
 
barracuda156 said:
I think this is not true. Sonnet cards are supported on G5s and specs claim 6 Gbps. And real-life measurements seem to show a higher speed than 250 MB/s.
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I meant 2 Gbps per lane. The Sonnet cards would need four lanes to get near 8 Gbps. You need 8 lanes to get the full 10 Gbps. Here's an 8 lane card https://www.sonnettech.com/product/presto10gbesfp.html but the Quad G5 has only one slot that supports 8 lanes and that is usually used by the GPU. Maybe you can move the GPU and the 10GbE card to an external expansion box like the Netstor NA255A. The NA255A can probably convert the PCIe gen 1 x8 of the G5 to gen 2 or gen 3 so an x4 card would be sufficient. But that is super expensive and there's no Mac OS X PowerPC 10GbE driver yet.

Which Sonnet cards were you referring to? One of the 4-lane SATA 6g cards?
 
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I did see a 10g card advertised specifically as being compatible with the G5. The brand escapes me but with a little hunting I know I will find it. I was shocked to stumble on it as the posting date seemed far back and I hadn’t imagined such speeds were available to small enterprise and consumers then.

I did email the company to ask about driver specs but surprisingly they haven’t answered after nearly six-months.

Seems we have a similar need; a PCIe card for multi-gig Ethernet that works in Leopard. I’ll gladly share whatever I do finally run with. I essentially want my Leopard-only cMP to use minimal internal storage and rely more on a home server. This would mean editing content in Aperture that is stored on the network. Still hunting.
 
Bingo.

PCI-X version mentioned in 2004.
Mentioned again in 2005.
Detailed by Intel.
TL;DR but a post from MR about adapting drivers.

The company with the drivers was Small Tree.

Sorry that these aren't PCI-E but it's a start because it shows that drivers for a 10GBe adapter do exist and did at some point work. It's a start, no?

G5.png
 
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Let's try to analyze the situation.

First, the software: If you wanna use this ethernet card on OSX you'll need drivers like many already said here. In Linux it's most certain that it would work.

Second, the hardware: You need to pay attention to the limitations of the technology available at the time, so according to one post from last year (assuming the target machine for the card it's a G5 Quad)
joevt said:
Quad G5 has:
- two x4 slots: ≈800 MB/s
- one x8 slot: ≈1600 MB/s
- one x16 slot: ≈3500 MB/s
Click to expand...
And theoretically an 10Gb ethetnet card can throughput 1250Mb/s at peak. So the "right" slot should be the x8? (I know that it's not, but let's keep the numbers to give the best scenario possible)

But you also need enough throughput from/to the HD(or SSD) to fully achieve the speeds. So far the best results that I even seen on this forum was achieved by @flyproductions on this post at ~783 write and ~803 read. So even then you see that probably "you'll never" achieve the full theoretical potential.

And another thing to put some consideration it's the overall system overhead. So if the ethernet controller can do all most of the transfers/processing without needing/relaying on the CPU making the actual performance of the system "slower" than the benefits that you can gain.

Hope that can help anyone, even if I couldn't give a recipe.
 
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dextructor said:
But you also need enough throughput from/to the HD(or SSD) to fully achieve the speeds. So far the best results that I even seen on this forum was achieved by @flyproductions on this post at ~783 write and ~803 read. So even then you see that probably "you'll never" achieve the full theoretical potential.
Click to expand...
It would still be much faster than 1Gb Ethernet, which I think is the main selling point.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
It would still be much faster than 1Gb Ethernet, which I think is the main selling point.
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Yeah, if achieving more than 125Mb/s (that's the theoretical speed of an 1 Gigabit) you'll need an increasing number of things. In my iMac G5 If I'm not wrong I can achieve the max speed of my network transferring from my NAS, but the destination must be the SSD and the file has to be large enough to have time to buffer. When it was stock with the mechanical HDD, it never reached the full network speed.

So to make the "Ultimate Vintage-PPC Monster" it has many hurdles, pieces and not to forget what Operating System you'll chose depending on the hardware.
 
As I'm clueless on the subject, what difference is there with streaming?

I understand you're saying that transfers are limited by internal storage speeds. What about editing a photo or video over ethernet? Does that bypass the internal storage for the most part?
 
MrCheeto said:
What about editing a photo or video over ethernet? Does that bypass the internal storage for the most part?
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Technically no, because some part of the archive needs to be on cache and this cache it's local, then synced once you save your progress.

But to have a definitive answer it varies according to the software that you are using, so isn't that simple as yes or no.

Some softwares "can" use your file on the network, but if the power flickers momentarily and the server side didn't finished rebooting. Tough luck, try it again.

Stream isn't a magic bullet, it's simple transferring temporarily parts of an archive that your software can open on the fly on demand. Some streams cache using RAM, others use disk storage. But all varies and depends on the software and how it was designed to be used.

If from the early stages of developing for example a image editor that could benefit from network storage, it would be much more efficient and designed to be stable considering the occasional interruptions of the network.
 
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MrCheeto said:
Just need to find what chipset the Small Tree device used.
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There's a chance that it's an Intel chipset. According to this press release the variant at the time in 2009 uses Intel 82599 and the dissection of the Small Tree drivers from tonymacx86 shows I believe from looking only Intel Chipsets on that list.

But the release mention Snow Leopard, and that was the oldest I could find that mention any brand.
 
That's even more encouraging considering that Small Tree's Mac support clearly went back to the G5 PCI-X days as shown in my previous post. Those were Intel devices as well.

I think we're onto something.
 
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