mLOGICs mLINK R thunderbolt expansion chassis for Red Rocket

[Tehben Dean]

Do all these thunderbolt PCI enclosures need individual drivers or does the card just need a thunderbolt aware driver and then it will work in any of the various boxes?

[Tom.Wong]

the latter. thunderbolt protocol is built the same across the board. so when you plug it in and boot up the system will automatically see it, and just treat it like how a computer tower see's pci cards on its motherboards. it's up to the card company to have drivers that fit into that protocol. but a lot of stuff just works right off the bat. i don't think RED did anything special with their drivers, it just automatically recognized the pci card, and the drivers did the rest. but i think some cards require something extra in the drivers if their drivers don't fit within the thunderbolt realm for whatever reason.

[Tehben Dean]

Sweet thanks!

[Dewi Bungsu]

We tried the Sonnet Echo Express Pro with a 2011 17" Macbook Pro 2.3GHz Processor, 8GB RAM to do transcoding on a 1 minute clip that was in the laptop itself, not running off any external hard drive. The speed was not real time. We then transcoded the same clip without the Sonnet this time. It took the same amount of time to transcode the same clip with or without the Sonnet. Anyone knows how to do a proper test or how to configure a laptop setup with the Sonnet to work at its fastest speed despite the 4x lane limitation? Thanks!

Bert,

Check out this post by Jeff Kilgroe: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...=1#post1034465

Without going into all the details, the Thunderbolt port isn't fast enough to satisfy a PCIe 2.0 X4 slot, or a PCIe 1.x X8 slot... What you do gain with the X8 slot in the Magma is better distribution of bandwidth since the Rocket card is a v1.x 8 lane card. Theoretically, you stand to gain up to 250MB/s of throughput by moving the Rocket card from the Sonnet enclosure to the Magma 3T. In terms of real-world gains, I'm not so sure... I think it's one of those cases where you would have to compare benchmarks and see if the transition was really worth it.

I wouldn't stress over the little extra bandwidth afforded to the Rocket by going to the Magma box, unless you are primarily concerned only with the Rocket itself. I would go with whatever expander fits your overall needs the best. The Magma 3T looks like a compelling solution.

Personally, I think both of these companies dropped the ball on their slot capabilities. Sonnet did well by making their slots X16 in a mechanical sense and able to take a larger, beefier card. However, the support for PCIe v1.x cards is crippled by restricting the slots to 4 lanes. For PCIe v2.x cards it's just fine... Although, when I look through the arsenal of cards out there that I might install in one of these, the only v1.x card that enters the equation is the RED Rocket. So maybe these guys really aren't off their rockers. The Sonnet is a great solution so far, but for Rocket-oriented use, it seems the Magma 3T and the upcoming mLink enclosure are better suited.

Hope this helps.

[Mike Tiffee]

looks like September according to email I just got from mlogic.

[Tehben Dean]

Yup.

[Mike Halper]

Does anyone have dimensions for the mLink-R?

EDIT: In case anyone else is looking for the dimensions, mLogic responded to my email inquiry. Dimensions are: 11" L x 3.5" W x 6" H

[Tehben Dean]

mLogic said they were going to start taking preorders this month... anyone heard anything yet?

[Trevor Meeks]

I got my email from them on 8/5 saying I had a week to accept the order slot and make payment. I wasn't in a position to do it at the time, but yes, they are taking orders and I think things are moving along as planned.

[Tehben Dean]

That sucks cus I signed up way back when and haven't received such an email.... :(

EDIT: well the email I got was from the 5th and it said I was a reservation holder and that they would start taking preorders this month.