With the release of Thunderbolt 5 and its utilization in the ATTO ThunderLink NS 5102 100Gb Ethernet adapter, we now have a solution that can reliably support the performance that the ELEMENTS BOLT and ELEMENTS BLINK can deliver and allow for even the most demanding formats—such as 8K 16Bit DPX—to be played back at real time on a Mac Studio. This is exactly what we will demonstrate in this blog.
Our setup
The DPX sequences used in our test are stored on an ELEMENTS BOLT—an all-flash 2U shared storage system equipped with 24 NVMe drives and running the high-performance computing filesystem BeeGFS. BOLT can reach internal performance of up to 70 gigabytes per second per chassis and can easily be expanded or integrated into a hybrid storage environment. On a side note, we have used this combination of the ELEMENTS BOLT and BeeGFS to set the world record in the SPEC SFS performance benchmark back in 2021.
The client used in this test is an M4 Mac Studio which is connected to the ELEMENTS BOLT via new ATTO ThunderLink NS 5102 Thunderbolt 5 to 100Gb Ethernet adapter.
ELEMENTS BLINK is the network protocol used to connect the ELEMENTS BOLT to the Mac Studio. As a BeeGFS-native client for macOS and Windows, BLINK enables full bandwidth utilization of the available Ethernet connection. Compared to file-level storage access using NAS network protocols, ELEMENTS BLINK delivers significantly higher throughput with lower latency, and a more stable connection. By providing block-level storage access over Ethernet, instead of relying on Fibre Channel, BLINK not only lowers implementation costs but also reduces infrastructure complexity and overhead.
Playback test
For our test, we have used DaVinci Resolve to play a DPX sequence with 8K (7680 x 4320) resolution and 16 Bit color depth at 24 frames per second, each a single file with a 199,2 MB size. The overall bitrate amounts to 4,67 GB per second.
After pressing play, Mac Studio easily starts the sequence without a significant delay. The real-time playback remains smooth throughout the whole sequence with no apparent dropped frames. The WebUI of the ELEMENTS BOLT provides insights into the utilization of system resources. The read performance hovers around 4800 MB per second with CPU utilization ranging between 12 – 15 %. The CPU utilization of the Mac Studio hovers around 55 %.
Conclusion
The arrival of Thunderbolt 5, paired with the ATTO ThunderLink NS 5102 100Gb Ethernet adapter, marks a major leap forward in post-production connectivity. For the first time, we have a Thunderbolt-based solution that can keep up with the extreme performance that the ELEMENTS BOLT coupled with ELEMENTS BLINK provide. This powerful setup enables smooth, real-time playback of even the most demanding formats—like 8K 16-bit DPX—on a compact Mac Studio.
