Thunderbolt 3 in Action: Akitio Thunder3 Duo Pro DAS Review
by Ganesh T S on April 14, 2016 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- DAS
- Thunderbolt 3
- Akitio
Thunderbolt Software
Consumers dealing with Thunderbolt 3 must understand that this is cutting-edge technology. It is imperative that the drivers and the Alpine Ridge firmware be up to date in order to ensure a smooth usage experience. GIGABYTE has a driver update as well as a firmware update tool available for the GA-Z170X-UD5 TH motherboard, and other system vendors should also have similar updates available.
The Thunderbolt software component gets installed along with the driver. Unlike traditional USB, every connected Thunderbolt peripheral must first be authorized to connect before becoming accessible. This authorization can be permanent or on a case-by-case basis. Management of authorized devices is done through the Thunderbolt software.
The software also allows users to check the driver and firmware versions.
Power Consumption
Power consumption of the Thunder3 Duo Pro units were recorded under various conditions. While using the device in a standalone mode (i.e, just connected to the host, and no daisy chaining involved), the unit idled at around 5.4W and had a peak power consumption of around 12.1W. This was with two of the Intel SSDs in RAID-0 in the course of our benchmarking routine.
Benchmarks were also processed with the typical usage scenario of high-capacity hard drives. Two 8TB Seagate Enterprise NAS HDDs (7200 RPM) were configured in RAID-0 for this purpose. Peak power consumption was around 40W, but the unit stayed between 24W and 28W throughout the course of our benchmarking.
Adding the SanDisk Extreme 900 to either of the above configurations drove up the power consumption at the wall by around 5 - 8W.
Concluding Remarks
The Thunderbolt ecosystem has received a major boost with the release of products and peripherals supporting Thunderbolt 3 with its Type-C connector. Intel has managed to create a compelling case for the inclusion of Thunderbolt 3 in various systems due to the unique features of the Alpine Ridge controller. The integration of a USB 3.1 Gen 2 host controller has emerged as a key aspect.
Coming to the business end of the review, the 2-bay Akitio Thunder3 Duo Pro performed flawlessly in our testing, and gave expected results in various benchmarks. More importantly, thanks to the presence of a two-port controller, it could easily bring out the various advantage provided by Thunderbolt (daisy chaining etc.). The availability of a USB 3.1 Gen 1 device port ensures that the unit can also be used with systems that don't have Thunderbolt 3.
The unit has a solid feel and a pleasing industrial design. The tool-less installation procedure for the drives is welcome. The unit includes an active Thunderbolt 3 cable (capable of handling 40 Gbps), and, for a cutting-edge product, the street price of $378 sounds reasonable. That said, there is scope for improvement in the product - it would be nice to have easy hot-swap capabilities similar to, say, the LaCie 2big Thunderbolt 2. A notch / plastic key to help in setting the RAID level would also be welcome. The drive bay / slot could also be designed to make drive removal / replacement simpler.
Going through the specifications of the Thunderbolt 3 peripherals currently announced / available in the market (including the Akitio Thunder3 Duo Pro) shows that Windows support is being worked upon first, and not Mac OS X. This leads me to believe that Thunderbolt has well and truly arrived for the mass market. Widespread usage is bound to bring down the premium associated with Thunderbolt right now. One can definitely say that Thunderbolt will not go the Firewire way.
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name99 - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
I don't understand this obsession with daisy-chaining. Daisy-chaining is a LOUSY technology. It's been a lousy technology in every damn form it's ever shipped, whether SCSI, ADB, firewire, or thunderbolt. One of the few things USB actually got right from the start was to make it clear on day one that their expansion solution was hubs, not daisy-chaining.Why does it suck?
- It substantially reduces your power-on-off flexibility. This may not matter in a testing lab, but in the real world there are constant reasons why you might want to power a device off. With a hub this is a simple issue; with a daisy-chain it requires considering the implications of everything that is connected, and generally unmounting a bunch of devices then changing the topology.
- right now when it's all skittles and roses, every thunderbolt device comes with two ports. But as soon as this goes mainstream, the usual attempts at cost-cutting will have one device after another shipping with only one port. And then what happens to your chaining?
Because USB got this right on day one, USB hubs have always been cheap as dirt. Everybody owns one, and devices that need to present the illusion of daisy-chaining (like keyboards with two USB ports, one for the mouse to connect to; or displays with USB connectors) just stick in a cheap USB hub chip. Because Firewire (and the other specs I mentioned) did NOT get this right, FW hubs never became cheap. Even the FW400 hubs were expensive, and I don't think decent FW800 hubs were EVER produced (when I was looking for them, the best I could find was a pathetic two port hub).
Instead of cheering how great Thunderbolt daisy-chaining is, you should be considering the reality that, because Intel has insisted on doing things this way (in spite of THIRTY YEARS of evidence that it is a stupid idea) they are likely going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. All those thunderbolt-enabled USB C ports will ACTUALLY land up connected to pure USB3.1 hubs, which will in turn, once again, mean that USB3.1 is the only really viable mass market for storage, and these super-high-end storage solutions (and external GPUs, etc) will continue to remain irrelevant to the mass market.
Nice going Intel --- turns out instruction sets are not the only things you're incapable of handling competently.
Klug4Pres - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Enjoyable rant, thanks!Wardrop - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
I'm sure Apple, who are obsessed with having a single cable for everything, would have been the ones who pushed Intel to support daisy chaining.Daisy chaining isn't a bad idea if implemented properly though. It should be passive to really work, as in, a physically unplugged device should be able to pass through a thunderbolt signal. Like a switch that opens and closes depending on whether the device is powered on or not.
galta - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
A little bit angrier than I would have expected, but correct in its essence.All these weird proprietary interfaces fail for a combination of high costs and lack of scale. All of us - or at least most of us - remember when microchannel was thought to be the future and we all know were it ended.
As someone said before, Thunderbolt, as well as FireWire in its time, will make sense only for the 15 people who make 4k video editing on a 5k monitor on their Apples.
The remaining will be more than glad to remain with USB.
zodiacfml - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Same here. I never understood daisy chaining. I just dismissed it long ago that some people use the feature.ganeshts - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
Daisy chaining is a feature that is available.It is not mandatory that it needs to be used.
Most people can just use a dock and it would have all the types of USB 3.x ports that they need.
The beauty of Thunderbolt 3 is that it allows for just a single interface in sleek products, and it will have an ecosystem that allows people to pick and choose what interfaces they want in their system when 'docked' - that can't be said for proprietary interfaces developed by system vendors. (though I do agree that Thunderbolt being restricted to Intel-only systems is a bit of an issue in the long run - if AMD manages to claw back to performance parity with mid-range and higher Intel systems)
hyno111 - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
The ATTO and CrystalDiskMark result for SSD RAID is missing.ganeshts - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
My apologies. There was a CMS issue when we updated the HDD results. It is now fixed.epobirs - Saturday, April 16, 2016 - link
Considering the main bottleneck here is going to be SATA, it seems like the box could have been implemented with USB 3.1 Gen 2 and delivered the same performance at lower cost. Even with two SSDs rather than platter drives, the best throughput after overhead should rarely exceed what USB 3.1 can handle.Down the road, a box with slots for, say, four U.2 SSDs, should really utilize Thunderbolt 3's bandwidth while still being small enough to consider portable. THAT would be worth spending a good amount for a professional user, being able to access live data or do very large backups at those speeds in a rig small enough to go on a location shoot comfortably.
ganeshts - Saturday, April 16, 2016 - link
Definitely.. the performance of a single unit is very close to that of the bus-powered SanDisk Extreme 900 we reviewed before. However, this unit is clearly meant to introduce the benefits of Thunderbolt 3 to the market - DisplayPort output, daisy chaining with docks for extra functionality etc. The storage bandwidth from a single unit is not the main focus, as this is one of the first Thunderbolt 3 devices to be introduced. We will soon see high bay-count devices with Thunderbolt 3 at NAB next week - Accusys has already pre-announced a 12-bay one.