EPIC -> Thunderbolt (question for RED)

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

Guys,

A few months ago RED announced that they had decided to can the announced SATA interface module for EPIC/Scarlet that would have allowed the use of RED Drive etc. - fair enough, and they were more than generous in offering the SSD trade-in deal.

Now with Thunderbolt, and Thunderbolt RAIDs etc, a whole lot of other storage options will open up. Have RED considered producing a Thunderbolt interface module for EPIC/Scalet? Is anyone aware of a 3rd party company considering such a module?

What do folks think of that idea?

Mike

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Looking forward to Thunderbolt I/O on next generation Red Stations.
In terms of fast pipes for camera modules, fiber seems like the obvious candidate and that might include Thunderbolt over fiber.

Red Drives have been EOL'd for a reason, too slow and a perception of reliability issues.

Cheers - #19

[Fabricio Morato]

One question, for the red station, how much slower is the esata output compared to the maximum possible output?

[Tom.Wong]

this has been covered a few times already, but again, just because you have a faster connection doesn't mean you'll get better speeds from the SSD's. they are 3g sata based SSD's, and RED has qualified them somewhere in the mide 200 mb/sec read and write. having a 10g port isn't gonna make that go any faster than it already can. and if they come out with new speed ssd, and it's 6g sata, that's still only max 600 mb/sec, and can still be accomplished with a 6g esata. so the big benefit from thunderbolt is to connect a big raid to offload faster with cheaper spinning disc media, and hopefully one day esata fan out cables or hubs so that you could possible offload multiple red mags at once to a really fast raid.

there literally is not point in having a thunderbolt red station unless the media starts being able to read and write past 600 mb/sec.

[joe hedge]

there literally is not point in having a thunderbolt red station unless the media starts being able to read and write past 600 mb/sec.

Actually a point I can think of is, for MBP laptops, you apparently can't run the Express34 slot and Thunderbolt port at the same time, so if you can daisy-chain the SSD card reader on Thunderbolt it would be good.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The RED Station unit and the RED SSD media are all built on 3Gbps SATA at the moment. Adding Thunderbolt to it won't speed it up.

Future media could be built on 6Gbps SATA or other faster interface standards, which could take advantage of Thunderbolt and other new tech coming along.

I'd really like to see dual Thunderbolt ports on the next Macbook Pro. One TB port could host 3 x 6Gbps eSATA ports at full speed, for example. There are several Thunderbolt to eSATA adapters due here shortly from different manufacturers. This will allow us to connect one or two RED Station modules as well as one or two storage devices on which to offload to.

Thunderbolt in its current form has dual 10Gbps channels in one connector. As per the spec, Intel recommends that each device restrict itself to operating on one channel if it is designed to allow daisy-chaining or display pass-through. But some devices, such as PCIe expanders, high speed interface adapters and performance RAIDs will be able to utilize all 20Gbps for an effective 1600MB/s. So far, all the Thunderbolt devices I have seen announced, with the exception of a couple PCIe expansion units and one multi-port 6Gbps eSATA adapter, are all designed to operate on a single 10Gbps channel.

As for RED's SSD's. Read speeds are in the upper 200MB/s, which suggest they are capable of saturating the 3Gbps connection for reads, or at least coming close. Writes are slower.

Actually a point I can think of is, for MBP laptops, you apparently can't run the Express34 slot and Thunderbolt port at the same time, so if you can daisy-chain the SSD card reader on Thunderbolt it would be good.

Er... Who told you that? I had a prototype Thunderbolt drive enclosure here for a bit and I copied plenty of stuff from an eSATA HDD via an ExpressCard eSATA adapter over to the Thunderbolt enclosure. That would be, like, stupid if it didn't work. Unless I'm missing something and it has since been disabled in firmware due to some other reason (power, etc..).

That said, Thunderbolt on RED Station would be good for daisy-chaining, but as of now, all the media is SATA-based. So you would be looking at more expensive hardware to have a Thunderbolt interface plus PCIe to eSATA bridge in each RED Station module. Like I've said a bunch of times before, the killer app here is a Thunderbolt to 4x eSATA adapter.

[joe hedge]

"One new bit of information from the series of answers is a possible drawback for high-end Macbook Pro users: A PCI Express Card in the Express Card slot cannot be operated if the system is connected to a Thunderbolt device. Apple recommends disconnecting the device if you are going to use the Express Slot."

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...al_drives.html

[Jeff Kilgroe]

"One new bit of information from the series of answers is a possible drawback for high-end Macbook Pro users: A PCI Express Card in the Express Card slot cannot be operated if the system is connected to a Thunderbolt device. Apple recommends disconnecting the device if you are going to use the Express Slot."

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...al_drives.html

OK... I'll take that with a pound of salt for now. Cuz, like I said, it worked for me here. I've actually done it, unless something has changed, but there's been no new firmware/SMC updates in the mean time that I'm aware of. That and there's no reference to any such restriction in any of Apple's documentation, nor is it in the transcript of the Q&A session that AppleInsider references -- complete transcript doesn't seem to be available, though, just the 10 questions and subsequent commentary. If something has changed in the last 60 days, since I was deprived of my Thunderbolt beta enclosure, then Apple will have some serious backlash on their hands. Just as bad, if not worse, than the whole FCPx deal. ...Smells like a good argument for class-action if you ask me. And that would be sad. :( Every pro shooting R3D, SxS and P2 media would want to grab iSteve by the short and curlies.

I'll have my 6-bay Pegasus Thunderbolt unit here in about a week. I guess we'll see....

[Blair S. Paulsen]

I have downloaded Red SSDs via Red Station over eSATA to both Mac and Win7 writing to fast (600MB/sec+) RAIDs and never been able to exceed 150MB/sec.

It was my supposition that the added headroom of the Thunderbolt spec might actually allow me to get closer to the max read speed of the Red SSDs.

Would love to know the top speeds others have achieved and the topology of their rigs in hopes I can get into the mid-200s. Thanks in advance.

Cheers - #19

[Esmaile Neissi]

ME ALSO WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT IS THE MAX OFFLOAD SPEED OF THE RED SSDs. would be interesting to know that