MR Electronics’ new line of Lightning Thunderbolt 2 to PCIe equipped storage products are now available.

Of the new Lightning product family, the LTNG-XQ and LTNG-XQ-8 Thunderbolt 2 to PCIe equipped storage products are the ideal choice for Mac mini, MacBook and Mac Pro users having only Thunderbolt expansion available, but who want to connect to PCIe peripherals which are widely used in the digital video, digital cinema, corporate video and production/post production industries. What’s more, all of the Lightning products are expandable by daisy chaining them to other Thunderbolt connected devices.

The JMR Lightning LTNG-XQ and LTNG-XQ-8 are based on just three Thunderbolt 2 to PCIe adapter boards, developed by JMR and providing one, two or four PCIe slots. The unique variants of each model are in the packaging and additional features, such as an on-board RAID storage system; provision for desktop or rackmount installation; and soon-to-be released provision for mounting the Mac Pro. Two of the main Lightning family of Thunderbolt 2 to PCIe storage products include:

° LTNG-XQ-DT or RM, an Intel-certified desktop or rackmount Thunderbolt 2 to PCIe quad slot expander. It features four x16 PCIe expansion slots (it contains PCIe switches internally) for four compatible PCIe peripheral cards and quad 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 I/O ports so other compatible Thunderbolt products may be daisy-chained beyond the Lightning product.

It has internal forced air cooling and is powered by an internal 460 watt power supply, and is attractively packaged with a rugged powder coated finish. The LTNG-XQ supports all compatible PCIe cards, up to full-height and full-length peripherals. It also provides extra DC power connections for GPUs requiring those connections.

The LTNG-XQ features four full-bandwidth PCIe slots, using two independent Thunderbolt 2 20Gb/s bridge circuits: One Thunderbolt 2 bridge drives two slots, and a second internal Thunderbolt 2 bridge drives the other two slots. Connections to a host like the Mac Pro include using two of the three available Thunderbolt 2 bus connections to the Mac. Daisy-chain expansion beyond the LTNG-XQ is also available via its Thunderbolt 2 expansion ports.

° LTNG-XQ-8-DT or LTNG-XQ-8-RM are a four slot desktop (DT) or 4U rackmount (RM) Thunderbolt 2 to PCIe expander with an internal hardware (6Gb/s SAS) RAID controller and an 8-bay disk-ready RAID array for working storage. They are both an Intel certified product featuring four x16 (mechanically, x8 electrically) PCIe expansion slots and quad 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 I/O ports so other compatible Thunderbolt products may be daisy-chained beyond the Lightning product.

Included in the desktop and rackmount models are a Thunderbolt compatible ATTO SAS RAID controller installed in one of the PCIe slots, and an integrated, hot-swappable RAID disk storage subsystem which may be populated with any compatible 2.5-inch SFF drives, either rotating or SSDs – thus providing “on board” storage up to 32TB.

Both products have internal forced air cooling and are powered by an internal 460 watt power supply, and are attractively packaged with a rugged powder coated finish. The LTNG-XQ products work with all Thunderbolt compatible PCIe peripheral devices and supports all compatible PCIe cards, up to full-height and full-length peripherals. They both provide extra DC power connections for GPUs requiring those additional connections.

Both the desktop and rackmount models' unique design features four full-bandwidth PCIe slots, using two independent Thunderbolt 2 20Gb/s bridge circuits: One Thunderbolt bridge drives two slots, and a second internal Thunderbolt bridge drives the other two slots. Connections to a host like the Mac Pro include using two of the three available Thunderbolt 2 bus connections to the Mac. Daisy-chain expansion beyond the LTNG-XQ is also available via its Thunderbolt 2 expansion ports.

The advantage of this architecture is enhanced operating bandwidth for demanding applications which will utilize all the 20Gb/s bandwidth available from each Thunderbolt 2 port. Both models can operate at “full speed” (1200+ MB/s transfer rates) using one bus while other demanding peripherals can operate at full speed using the other bus.Using popular SFF SSDs in the RAID easily provides sustained data transfer speeds greater than 1,200 MB/s for “working” files.