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ryantownsend | 9 years ago

Are 16x TB3, 4x TB2 AND 4x USB3 actually achievable with current/near-future hardware?

If Apple were to implement this, I'd imagine it would be N x TB3/USB3 USB-C format ports, an ethernet port and maybe HDMI (though a dongle would possibly negate that – if 2.1 can be achieved that way)

Otherwise, looks good to me.

discuss

order

LeifCarrotson|9 years ago

Not feasibly.

If you really wanted to do it, the biggest processors have 40 lanes of PCIe. Intel's Xeon E5's can be dual-socket mounted, for a total of 80 PCIe lanes. Adding PCIe switching, like two Avago/PLX PEX9797s (see http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx-pex97..., particularly the diagram at http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG) can get you there in the end.

But the sacrifice is that you actually only have 80 lines of PCIe, and it all has to be coordinated. Dual-socket computing does not quite double your processing power, and a switch adds latency. Your overall bandwidth will still be limited to what you have coming from the processor.

Keyframe|9 years ago

I'm not sure Alpine Ridge, or whatever the name is, even supports that many TBs at the same time.