PCIe-6321 over Thunderbolt to PCIe Card Expansion System ?

[Peter_B]

Hi folks,

With modern PCs lacking PCIe slots I seek a way to achieve low latency (sub 1ms) DAQ I am used to via the PCIe bus on my PC or laptops.  USB 3 DAQ latency is too high, & by comparison even the best audio capture devices+drivers achieve 6ms round trip latency (RTL).

So, I hope to use a PCIe-6321 plugged into a PCIe expansion system over Thunderbolt 3.   Are there any reasons this idea could not work ?  e.g. the DAQmx driver might not be “thunderbolt aware”, or some hardware limitation exists ?

I am hoping to purchase and try out the following two PCIe Card Expansion systems

1. Sonnet SE 1
2. OWC Mercury Helios 3S

[santo_13]

The problem is that the PCIe cards depend on low-level PCIe protocol implementation and when this is marshalled over Thunderbolt, several vendors cut corners on the features to map over Thunderbolt and there is no sure-shot way to know if it would affect the PCIe card's functionality.

Takeaway: NI doesn't guarantee anything beyond the functionality of the cards in the PCIe slot on the motherboard; your mileage may vary.

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

PCIe is dwindling in availability in new PC's? That's news to me, what are they trending towards now?

-AK2DM

[santo_13]

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@AnalogKid2DigitalMan wrote:

PCIe is dwindling in availability in new PC's? That's news to me, what are they trending towards now?

-AK2DM

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Maybe on the Mini PC or Slim PCs?

[Peter_B]

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@santo_13 wrote:

Takeaway: NI doesn't guarantee anything beyond the functionality of the cards in the PCIe slot on the motherboard; your mileage may vary.

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Thanks Santo,

I understand NI are unable to make any guarantees, I was just seeking if there were any known show stoppers.

I Rx a promising reply from Sonnet which I'm quoting here:

"other customers have claimed success when using NI based PCIe cards in our chassis before, so we do expect these to be usable for you as well....You are correct that the NI driver for the PCIe card within the chassis may have their own requirements, and the driver may need to have a 'Thunderbolt aware' component for best use in an external Thunderbolt chassis. Even if 'Thunderbolt aware' is not included with the (NI) driver, we would expect the worst case is the setup may not be hot-pluggable."

[Peter_B]

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@AnalogKid2DigitalMan wrote:

PCIe is dwindling in availability in new PC's? That's news to me, what are they trending towards now?

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Sorry I meant to clarify.  Full height PCIe slots are non existent on the new PCs used in our company.   I need it on at least 10 lab PCs and that would cause additional cost/work/space requirements.  So I'm hoping to see if Thunderbolt will solve the issue. 

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

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@Peter_B wrote:

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@AnalogKid2DigitalMan wrote:

PCIe is dwindling in availability in new PC's? That's news to me, what are they trending towards now?

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Sorry I meant to clarify.  Full height PCIe slots are non existent on the new PCs used in our company.   I need it on at least 10 lab PCs and that would cause additional cost/work/space requirements.  So I'm hoping to see if Thunderbolt will solve the issue. 

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Thanks for the clarification. Let us know your results with the expansion chassis and good luck!

-AK2DM