PCIe Expansion System User's Manual

MAGMA
35
PCIe Expansion Solutions with the EB2
In the following section we will take a look at possible PCI Express
expansion solutions using Magma’s EB2 chassis.
Digi Design Pro Tools®
Pro Tools® is a comprehensive
solution for professional music
editing. It offers advanced
capabilities for recording and
manipulation of music by controlling
a large number of music tracks.
This is done using at least one PCIe
card with multiple Digital Signal
Processor (DSP) chips onboard.
From a system’s standpoint, the
more PCIe cards (and hence DSP
chips) are available, the more tracks
can be edited and recorded digitally
for a better final result.
By combining the power of PCIe expansion through an EB2 system with
multiple such PCIe cards, the same PC can record substantially more
tracks. Additionally the same system may contain a storage controller
(SAS/SATA/SCSI) and the hard drives for actually recording the tracks
– all inside one box, freeing much of the PC hardware for other tasks.
The table below shows a comparison between PCI and PCIe cards in
terms of the number of recorded tracks.
Sampled
Frequency
No. of tracks out of
maximum possible
Description/Notes
48KHz
192 out of 192
96KHz
96 out of 96
192 KHz 36 out of 36
Using Magma ExpressBox2 PCIe
Expansion system
48KHz
144 out of 192
96KHz
96 out of 96
192 KHz 13 out of 36
Using Magma CB2 PCI Expansion