THUNDERBOLT peripherals list

VGurcu

VGurcu

Well-known member
One big reason for many of us to use a Macpro is PCI expansion slots. With the release of new thunderbolt equipped Sandy Bridge Imacs and Macbook pro laptops, need of a desktop comp for video editors is diminishing (especially for newcomers who havent invested in older peripherals); provided Blackmagic, AJA and Matrox follows up with their promise in supporting the thunderbolt equipped I/O devices.
Interestingly storage producers were first to show related products at NAB. I wanted to keep a list of companies releasing thunderbolt products soon:

Lacie's Little Big Disk:
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10549

Promise Pegasus RAID system:
http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?from=search&region=en-global&m=15&rsn1=40&rsn3=47

And Promise SANlink dual fibre channel adapter:
http://www.promise.com/news_room/news.aspx?m=23&region=en-global&rsn=823

BlackMagic Ultra Studio 3D
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/ultrastudio3d/

Matrox thunderbolt adapter for MXO2 family products:
http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mac/mxo2_family/factors/

AJA Phaser?
http://www.aja.com/news/index_article.php?id=141

Please keep adding into the list....
 
Yes, I saw all of this at NAB. AJA's Phaser (code name until release announcement) is going to be an amazing product. It's basically their I/O Express, with a Kona card, all bundled into a Thunderbolt enclosure. The drives all have amazing throughput. So iMac's and MBP's will be able to have mega-fast drives, and connect HD-SDI to production monitors. It's a very exciting time for video editors who need to be mobile.
 
Hmm- code named Riker and Phaser- you think the good folks at AJA like a certain show?

Noah
 
ThB definitely closes some I/O gaps between the towers and the iMacs/laptops. For the first time I'm seriously considering an iMac instead a Mac Pro. I think the performance gap is going to open back up though since FCP X will be able to access more RAM and more cores than FCP 7 currently can.
 
Yeah I'll miss cracking open my computer and slapping in cards- but not that much.

Noah
 
Well, remember that it's be a long time before you have 6-12 cores in an iMac or MBP, or 32GB of RAM. You can also put multiple graphics cards in a tower (but at NAB I heard talk of someone making a Thuderbolt box that will have multiple GPUs in it).
 
I think the performance gap is going to open back up though since FCP X will be able to access more RAM and more cores than FCP 7 currently can.
Click to expand...

Possibly, but we don't even know what FCP X will achieve with a 12 core & 32gb RAM that can't be done with a 4 core & 16 GB RAM ;)

Is 2011 Imac a desktop replacement? You bet, for the avarege & seaseoned 'video' editor. For the crème de la crème film & FX editors there will always be 12 core macpro desktops.
 
Valid and important point. "What" exactly will FCPX load into RAM? Thus, how much RAM will be overkill? Will project size effect that? How will codec/project size effect what's processed by GCD and how? Lots of questions. But it's a good bet that with the GCD framework, the more and faster cores/GPUs the better. Just what threshold does that become unnecessary, and what are the specific determining factors?

Still, I'm pretty certain a 6 core Mac Pro will outperform a dual core MBP when GCD is introduced to video editing.

We will see, on June 32nd. ;)
 
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