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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DanNeely - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
Were there any issues with video quality/reliability in your daisy chaining test?I'm guessing not since you didn't come close to saturating the bus in this test, but I'd be really interested in seeing what happens if you ever get to play with something like a 10bay SSD enclosure and external GPU that could devour most of the bandwidth for what ever they're running.
ganeshts - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
The DisplayPort lanes are muxed together with the PCIe lanes, and, if any throttling were to happen, it would be on the PCIe lanes, and not the DisplayPort ones.But, yes, we were way short of saturating the link because we were not equipped properly to test that aspect.
DanNeely - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
Ok. I didn't know the DP lanes were given explicit preference in the MUXing; but I suppose that in general it's probably the right way to go.repoman27 - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
I just wanted to clarify that Thunderbolt supports multiple signaling modes over a single port via hardware muxing, however, when operating in Thunderbolt signaling mode, it uses protocol converters and crossbar switches to mux at the packet level. So the Thunderbolt mode is more like iSCSI or other technologies that encapsulate and transport data streams over IP networks alongside other packets. The encapsulation that Thunderbolt performs is incredibly lightweight, though, and Intel even refers to it as a "meta protocol".Thunderbolt seems to have fairly solid mechanisms in place for guaranteeing timely delivery of packets that are part of isochronous data streams such as DisplayPort. OG Thunderbolt did have some issues with USB audio adapters, as it had no way of knowing that the PCIe packets destined for the USB host controller in the device were particularly time sensitive.
Bear in mind that the signaling rate of a Thunderbolt PHY is considerably higher than the versions of PCIe or DisplayPort that it's carrying. Also, it can strip out all the bit-stuffing that is normally used to maintain a constant DisplayPort data rate and just send the packets carrying actual data. Or it can essentially bit-stuff with PCIe packets instead.
And one last niggle, Thunderbolt cables are really nothing like regular DisplayPort cables aside from sharing the miniDP connector. They're active and have four full-duplex signaling lanes, whereas DP cables are generally passive and only support half-duplex lanes for the main link.
DanNeely - Friday, April 15, 2016 - link
You say USB Audio was a problem with the original generation, does that mean it's not a problem in the 2nd/3rd generation? If so, how was it fixed: Throwing more bandwidth at the problem, or by doing usb packet inspection to ID and prioritize the usb audio stream?Also, am I right in assuming a TB dock with audio out would be using a built in usb audio device?
repoman27 - Saturday, April 16, 2016 - link
Here's Anand's description of the original problem: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4832/the-apple-thund...Honestly, I have no idea if the issue with the Promise Pegasus R6 drives (one of the very first Thunderbolt devices to make it to market) was ever fully resolved. In the meantime, Apple has released updates to their EFI, Thunderbolt host, device and cable firmware (yup, even the cables have firmware), and USB host controller and audio device drivers. If I had to guess, making the USB host controller / audio device drivers Thunderbolt aware and capable of isochronous bandwidth reservation (a la FireWire) might have solved the problem. However, Anand's conclusions about the root cause are different than mine, so I could be way off base.
And yes, AFAIK Thunderbolt docks all use USB devices in some form or another for audio I/O.
danbob999 - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
"the street price of $378 sounds reasonable"Sorry but no, a hard drive case is not worth $378. Wake me up when it cost less than $30.
NCM - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
On the off chance that you're just ignorant, not a troll, I'll point out that it's not a "hard drive case." This enclosure holds two drives, it provides a selection of hardware RAID options, and it has very high speed connectivity via Thunderbolt 3. It's also one of the first products of of it kind. Each one of those things adds cost.Yes it's not cheap, but this kind of product will become less expensive over time. For comparison purposes we have a bunch of 2.5" drive RAID enclosures at the office that run about $270 each (empty), see http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/882789-REG/C...
danbob999 - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
This is a 2x3.5" case. It's too bulky to be useful for 2.5" SSDs. It's too expensive and no faster and a plain USB3 case when you put two 3.5" HDDs.I wasn't trolling, I seriously don't see any use case for it. The fact that it needs a fan to operate just make it worse.
Guspaz - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link
Can you point out a 2x3.5" USB 3 hard drive enclosure with hardware RAID support for under $30? I get that you think $378 is too much, but $30 seems far more unreasonable a price than $378.