Mac Pro and ATTO Fibre Channel – Over 16,000MB/s Sustained-Throughput for Video Editing

The new, third-generation Apple Mac Pro® is among the most powerful workstations available for content creation. It uses Intel Xeon processors with up to 28 cores, is expandable to up 1.5 terabytes of RAM, can be configured with dual Radeon™ Pro Vega II Duo GPUs, and features eight PCIe slots for expansion.

Content creation relies on high bit rate and bit depth applications that place heavy demands on data networks. This is why Fibre Channel remains a key storage network technology used for media workflows. It is a low latency solution that provides deterministic throughput and reliability. Routine actions like playback, which has been transitioning from HD and 2K to 4K and 8K streams, are smooth and glitch-free when run on Fibre Channel backbones.

Thanks to the PCIe slots in the Mac Pro, users can install ATTO Celerity™ Fibre Channel quad-channel HBAs to utilize as much bandwidth as is technically possible from network storage connections and feed the Mac Pro all of the data it can handle.

Professional studios rely on ATTO HBAs for this very reason. To demonstrate how ATTO is the perfect pairing with Apple®, we put two ATTO Celerity 32GB FC quad HBAs into two x16 slots inside a Mac Pro for maximum throughput. ATTO MultiPath Director™ was used to aggregate bandwidth across both HBAs for high-performance connectivity with a NetApp E-series all-flash array. The result: over 16,000MB/s sustained throughput. This particular demo is available on our YouTube channel.

ATTO MultiPath Director is a specialized multipathing driver incorporated into ATTO Celerity HBAs. Implemented across all hosts, Multipath Director improves overall Fibre Channel SAN efficiency with consistent uninterrupted access to data through failover and failback protection. Load balancing increases overall system performance by using more than one Fibre Channel path to transfer data. ATTO Celerity also supports Xsan® software built into macOS®.

ATTO Technology drivers are compatible with macOS. Our software tools, like ATTO Disk Benchmark™ for macOS and ATTO 360™ Tuning, Monitoring and Analytics Software, will help to optimize any media workflow environment.

This support extends to users who rely on Thunderbolt™ for their connectivity. ATTO ThunderLink® Thunderbolt to Fibre Channel adapters have the same features, although top speeds might differ slightly due to the Thunderbolt specification. All ATTO ThunderLink® Thunderbolt adapters are designed to maximize available bandwidth and are purpose-built for media workflows.