NVMe drives can be used over USB because they conform to the standard USB Mass Storage Class, which has broad operating system support. In contrast, Hailo-8/8L accelerators don’t expose themselves as generic storage devices. They require direct PCIe connectivity and a dedicated Hailo driver to function, so they won’t work through USB in the same way.
@user441 Got it - thanks for helping explain it =).
That makes sense - I guess those enclosures are built more for mass-storage devices.
Drat it - I have a Hailo-8 board, but the server I want to use it on only has 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, not Thunderbolt support. (I don’t think there’s too many servers with Thunderbolt 3 or 4 support?)
And the M.2 slots on there are used for the main storage drive (i.e. for the OS etc.)
I’ll see if there’s a free PCIe slot, and either install a M.2 PCIe adapter card, or possibly a PCIe Thunderbolt 3/4 card, to give myself more flexbility.
From Hailo’s perspective, are there any disadvantages of either of those options? (e.g. will the PCIe Thunderbolt card, plus a Thunderbolt PCIe enclosure add much latency, or cause any incompatibilities?)
The answer depends on your specific hardware. You can use the Hailo Integration Tool to measure the number of PCIe lanes and the bandwidth between the host and device in both directions.
Typically, PCIe bandwidth limitations only matter in corner cases that require maximum performance. In most use cases, you are unlikely to notice any performance impact.