New Sonnet DV Series chassis - connect two PCIe 3.0 cards to two, independent Thunderbolt ports at full 40 Gbps speeds

Thunderbolt 4 is a technologically advanced interface created by Intel. It is the successor to the popular Thunderbolt 3 and was officially presented in July 2020. Even though Thunderbolt 4 is 3 years old, it still offers impressive 40 Gb/s speeds, versatility and convenience. Making it a valuable technology in many fields, including professional video and audio editing, data backup, and tasks requiring high connector performance.

However, in some cases, 40 Gb/s is too low a transfer speed. Especially if we want to connect more than one fast PCIe 3.0 card to one computer.

We will have to wait until next year, 2024, for Intel to present Thunderbolt 5, and probably until 2025 for the first computers with implemented Thunderbolt 5 technology to go on sale.

But what to do now when we need to connect two PCIe 3.0 cards operating at the full speed of the Thunderbolt 4 port, i.e. 40 Gb/s?

Sonnet Technologies meets our needs with its latest products - external PCIe enclosures for Thunderbolt. These housings - SONNET DuoModo Echo II DV Module in the desktop version and SONNET DuoModo Echo II DV Module and SONNET xMac Studio / Echo II DV in the RACK versions - in addition to two slots for PCIe 3.0 x16 cards, have two independent Thunderbolt controllers for connection to a computer (host ).

Thanks to this solution, each card is connected to a separate Thunderbolt port and each card uses the full 40 Gb/s bandwidth.

Mac Studio and other Mac M1/M2 Pro series computers feature powerful Thunderbolt/USB4 ports, each individually controlled by its own dedicated Thunderbolt bus. Installed in an xMac Studio or DuoModo system, the Echo II DV module harnesses the full potential of your computer by connecting two PCIe 3.0 card slots - each with its own Thunderbolt bus, allowing you to install two high-bandwidth DV I/O cards in a single enclosure.

By installing, for example, two NVMe M.2 or U.2 SSD controller cards into the housing and connecting them in RAID-0, we can achieve performance at the level of the built-in disk directly in the Mac computer. By using cards with multiple NVMe SSD drives, we can build RAID-5 and RAID-6, gaining very high performance and security of the matrix.

There are many applications in which the new PCIe for Thunderbolt enclosures from Sonnet Technologies are ideal for professional use. We invite you to take advantage of our offer and the Sonnettech products we offer.