How many USB/TB controllers?

Thanks. I follow that much. A better way to word it is how many actual controllers are included.

Eg, most of the recent Intel series supply 2 controllers (four ports) or one controller (2 ports)

Which equates to 254 or 127 devices

Early rumours during pre-release had suggest ultra would carry 2 or 4 TB4 controllers plus a usb controller.

Is there any clarification on this? As I have yet to see anything from apple or a developer.

Thanks again.

Again the chip is the clue! An Ultra is two Max chips bonded together. Which is why the Ultra has four TB3 and the Max two TB3. There is no hub logic or splitter’s.

Dan, thank you for responding again.

I think there’s a minor disconnect in thoughts.

The number of ports is only by history a clue. Intel macs use two ports per controller for usb, and 2 ports per Thunderbolt 3 controller.

I don’t see any indication this changed. But I wonder if we now get one port per controller or it remains two. M yes, I have found I can overload a single controller. I use a BOSD array, all under 4TB. All internal SATA and SAS via USB adaptor.

I found large quality hubs can have 2-4 controllers each. Making my collection of devices easily reach 127. When you add multiple keyboards, controllers, a graphical pad, mice, etc.

I currently have it spread over 6 ports.

I’m wondering if I could reduce the hub interconnects by using more ports. If so, I would be purchasing more smaller hubs.

I’m currently running into a bottleneck that’s causing drives to disconnect, due to power constraints.

Granted I could wait till the unit arrives. But I’d like to have the setup in place beforehand

@lostinlodos - Intel systems are radically different then Apples SoC chips. In the case of Intel the chip has only so many PCI lanes which is the bottle neck as a collection of lanes connect to a PCH chip (hub) to then be split out. So the collective devices need to share the upstream connection.

In the case of Apples M series chips used in the Studio Apple cleverly took a single SoC and bonded two together. In fact they had even visioned not only doubling but quadruple this bonding concept:

Max > Ultra > Extreme

But unlike Intel who increased the compute cores but held the PCI lanes mostly the same Apple is scaling both. In years past we described the architecture as asymmetric Vs symmetric on how the computer was designed. Apple has married these two concepts within the SoC!

So at the system there is no hub or spitters the TB3 port is direct. But the SoC version dictates how many TB3 ports it offers as the subunit (Max) only offers two. The Ultra offers four and if we see the Extreme it will offer Eight!!

So… you are over fixated on the failures of Intel’s design not to see how Apple novel approach lays waste to it. Even still what you do externally can still mess things up.

So you need to think how the data flows in your workflow.

As a photographer in my 2013 MacPro I compartmentalize my Boot drive as my OS & Apps leaving more than half of the internal 2TB SSD empty so caching, Virtual RAM & App scratch space have plenty of room and wear leveling is not constantly kicking in. I then have two external RAID drives one SSD the other HDD for my work files. The USB ports are strictly for the controls and data input from my cameras.

Hi Dan.

We’re still on two different topics. I’m aware of the port differences and why. USB is limited regardless of the chip implementation.

Though at this point I’ll just pull up the info when it arrives.