All good - love USB-c - but some one needs to come out with lower cost Thunderbolt 3 version of course it can support Gen 2 USB-C also - they would make a killing especially now that Thunderbolt 3 interface.
Thunderbolt 3 is growing market - keep in mind not just Apple but also all of Dell is using it and many other manufacture.
PC-World always states that Thunderbolt 3 has won the Port wars - you do realize that any thing that USB-C Gen 2 can do -- that Thunderbolt 3 supports and more like external graphics card
I say within in a year or two higher end computers will support it - even AMD.
I didn't say that TB3 is niche, my Dell has two ports, but that expensive external USB SSDs are niche. I have a PCIe boot drive and 2TB SATA SSD storage drive but I stick with HDDs for external. They make sense for Apple's port anorexic systems and high end users that use laptops but that is a niche. The Apple niche is already addressed with TB drives so this is a niche within a niche.
What I am saying and hoping is that since Thunderbolt 3 is now and open standard - that the prices will go down on drives. But the Dell Thunderbolt 3 drive is $700 and that is crazy
With TB 3 devices down as much a $100 or so - I except drives would be done - if not some one should get one out and make a killing.
"within in a year or two higher end computers will support it" I'm sure Intel thought that a year ago, and yet here we are. Until Thunderbolt can drive an eGPU at PCIe 3.0 x8, there is no reason to implement it over the much cheaper USB 3 - consumer demand has overwhelmingly shown that the difference in speed and latency is not something that the person on the street cares about, but s/he sure cares about their wallet.
I believe most of expensive TB 3 drives are in raid configurations mostly for graphics industry, but with open standard for interface the interface should drop and there is no reason that we will not see TB 3 drive enclosures under $100 or even more within a year.
Here is an example a 5 TB TB 3 drive for $249 and it is $50 more than USB C
Thunderbolt 3 is not just Intel anymore - it is open standard - even AMD will likely be supporting it one day. Thunderbolt HUB are not that much than USB C hubs.
Intel only announced plans to make the Thunderbolt protocol specification available to the industry under a nonexclusive, royalty-free license in a press release on May 24, 2017 (so just over a year ago). Also, they merely indicated that this would happen sometime "next year". Given how all other aspects of Intel's roadmap have slipped, I'd assume that this may get pushed out to 2H 2019 as well. I can't imagine that there are any 3rd party semiconductor designs underway yet that include Thunderbolt (except maybe at Apple).
Thunderbolt is winning the port wars: most laptops/computers don't ship with it. Consoles/smartphones don't ship it. Most laptop docks don't use it. Most ports that support Thunderbolt are used with USB peripherals.
USB-C is a love/hate relationship. Sadly %75 i would guess of devices on market don't use it right. I know from experience, i've bought maybe 10 USB-C hubs over the year so far and only 2 work right. By work they are still finicky about working sometimes.
They simply can't get power delivery right on them. Even my brand new Dell monitor spent fortune for the USB-C will only sometimes work.
I'm not sure the reason for this, if its lax standards for it when making devices, cheap components, or mixture of both. I suspect its mostly Chinese based products since they pump them out so fast.
By the way, the 10 devices are just the ones that warranty passed on, i've returned half a dozen more..4 from same manufacturer that the USB-C device didnt flat out work. Finally the last attempt i popped out the case to look inside and it was a total mess on circuit board, they had solder splatter all over that if you shake it can hear it rattle inside. They had some sort of hot glue randomly melted in spots. The actual USB-C connection inside was a wired connection to the board inside of solid connection. lol
I never recommend USB-C stuff to people unless its already on motherboard of phone. Even my older motherboard was first to have USB-C on it was disabled via bios update because they could not get it to work via drivers.
"Keeping in mind that PNY specifically chose USB Type-C instead of Thunderbolt to maintain compatibility with Apple’s MacBooks and other ultra-thin laptops with 5 Gbps USB 3.0 connectors, 800 MB/s does not really seem as a major performance bottleneck of the drive."
Thunderbolt 3 is fully compatible with USB-C which has adapters for lower performance USB 3,0 connectors
What Anton is trying to say is that because this is a USB 3.1 device, it will work with *any* USB host, including Thunderbolt 3 hosts. Whereas Thunderbolt devices, including Thunderbolt 3, can generally only be used with Thunderbolt hosts.
The JHL7440 Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controller (which should be available by now) supposedly offers an optional compatibility mode for connecting to USB Type-C hosts (non-Thunderbolt), but I haven't seen any devices that demonstrate this capability yet.
What I saying is there devices out that support both TB 3 and USB-C - but it very possible that supporting both means that you don't get the full speed of TB 3 - I did see drives that only support TB 3 that ran 2400MB instead 400 or so.
Right, WDC has the G-DRIVE and G-RAID with Thunderbolt 3, and Seagate offers the LaCie Rugged, d2 and big Thunderbolt 3 drives with dual interfaces. However, I believe those devices are implemented using a USB to SATA bridge chip connected to the basic USB Type-C port, a PCIe SATA host controller connected to the Thunderbolt controller, and a SATA 6Gbps 2:1 mux plus a microcontroller to switch between whichever port is in use and the SATA device or RAID controller. Which ends up being both complicated and expensive.
There is essentially no practical scenario where SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps limits the performance of even a pair of SATA 6Gbps drives in RAID 0. So the added expense of these dual Thunderbolt 3 / USB 3.x Type-C designs is pointless except for corner cases where you want to support the maximum transfer rates when using a $49 dongle with hosts that have Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 interfaces and lack USB 3.x. It's really only for RAID arrays with more than two drives that this begins to make any sense at all.
To clarify, while all Thunderbolt 3 ports support native USB 3.1 Gen 2 signaling as downstream facing ports (host ports), the JHL7440 is the only controller that supports operation as an upstream facing port (device port). The dual-interface designs currently on the market have 1 or 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports in addition to a separate USB 3.x Type-C port, and only one interface can be used at a time. Much like the multi-interface USB / FireWire / eSATA drives of yore.
"The manufacturer specs the drives for up to 800 MB/s sequential read speed, which indicates that there is an SSD a PCIe 3.0 interface inside that communicates with the host via a PCIe-to-USB bridge (ASMedia’s first-gen bridges could barely hit 10 Gbps)."
I think you missed a preposition, probably "with" in that sentence.
But also, it indicates no such thing. This is almost certainly just two SATA SSDs in RAID 0 behind an ASM1352R (SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps to dual SATA 6Gbps bridge chip). I have an enclosure with that chip that was released back in 2015, and I've clocked it at over 900 MB/s sequential read / 850 MB/s sequential write with a pair of 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 EVOs in it.
And your parenthetical comment is odd, considering USB 3.1 Gen 2, a.k.a. SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps, is very clearly limited to 10 Gbit/s, before you even account for encoding and protocol overhead. In other words, device throughput numbers will necessarily be less than 10 Gbit/s, so even barely hitting that would be impossible. By my calculations, real world throughput should top out in the 8360 - 8520 Gbit/s (1045 - 1065 MB/s) range.
Nothing exotic here, and in both cases, performance is primarily limited by the SATA SSDs they use, not the Asmedia bridge chip. I'd love to see someone benchmark the ASM1352R with a pair of 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 PROs, as I'm guessing that would be the high-water mark for USB 3.1 Gen 2 performance with currently shipping devices. Given the performance numbers quoted, that may actually be what Angelbird has done with with their SSD2GO PKT XT: https://www.angelbird.com/prod/ssd2go-pkt-xt-1731/
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HStewart - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
All good - love USB-c - but some one needs to come out with lower cost Thunderbolt 3 version of course it can support Gen 2 USB-C also - they would make a killing especially now that Thunderbolt 3 interface.smilingcrow - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
I think it's too niche so would be low volume and high cost so would remain a niche.Expensive SSDs are harder to justify in my eyes.
HStewart - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
Thunderbolt 3 is growing market - keep in mind not just Apple but also all of Dell is using it and many other manufacture.PC-World always states that Thunderbolt 3 has won the Port wars - you do realize that any thing that USB-C Gen 2 can do -- that Thunderbolt 3 supports and more like external graphics card
I say within in a year or two higher end computers will support it - even AMD.
HStewart - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3198249/computers/...Sorry I forgot link - wish I could edit comments.
smilingcrow - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
I didn't say that TB3 is niche, my Dell has two ports, but that expensive external USB SSDs are niche.I have a PCIe boot drive and 2TB SATA SSD storage drive but I stick with HDDs for external.
They make sense for Apple's port anorexic systems and high end users that use laptops but that is a niche.
The Apple niche is already addressed with TB drives so this is a niche within a niche.
HStewart - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
What I am saying and hoping is that since Thunderbolt 3 is now and open standard - that the prices will go down on drives. But the Dell Thunderbolt 3 drive is $700 and that is crazyWith TB 3 devices down as much a $100 or so - I except drives would be done - if not some one should get one out and make a killing.
The_Assimilator - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
"within in a year or two higher end computers will support it" I'm sure Intel thought that a year ago, and yet here we are. Until Thunderbolt can drive an eGPU at PCIe 3.0 x8, there is no reason to implement it over the much cheaper USB 3 - consumer demand has overwhelmingly shown that the difference in speed and latency is not something that the person on the street cares about, but s/he sure cares about their wallet.smilingcrow - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
A lot of people only use external drives for backups which makes high end external drives aimed at professionals or rich consumers.HStewart - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
I believe most of expensive TB 3 drives are in raid configurations mostly for graphics industry, but with open standard for interface the interface should drop and there is no reason that we will not see TB 3 drive enclosures under $100 or even more within a year.Here is an example a 5 TB TB 3 drive for $249 and it is $50 more than USB C
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072XWKGPT/ref=sspa_dk_d...
HStewart - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
Thunderbolt 3 is not just Intel anymore - it is open standard - even AMD will likely be supporting it one day. Thunderbolt HUB are not that much than USB C hubs.LordanSS - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
You say that, and it's been a couple years since Intel "opened" the standard on TB3.I ask then, have you seen any products/cards/controllers/etc from anyone else other than Intel? Yeah, I don't think so.
repoman27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
Intel only announced plans to make the Thunderbolt protocol specification available to the industry under a nonexclusive, royalty-free license in a press release on May 24, 2017 (so just over a year ago). Also, they merely indicated that this would happen sometime "next year". Given how all other aspects of Intel's roadmap have slipped, I'd assume that this may get pushed out to 2H 2019 as well. I can't imagine that there are any 3rd party semiconductor designs underway yet that include Thunderbolt (except maybe at Apple).Link to press release: https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/envision-wor...
Fergy - Sunday, July 1, 2018 - link
Thunderbolt is winning the port wars: most laptops/computers don't ship with it. Consoles/smartphones don't ship it. Most laptop docks don't use it. Most ports that support Thunderbolt are used with USB peripherals.imaheadcase - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
USB-C is a love/hate relationship. Sadly %75 i would guess of devices on market don't use it right. I know from experience, i've bought maybe 10 USB-C hubs over the year so far and only 2 work right. By work they are still finicky about working sometimes.They simply can't get power delivery right on them. Even my brand new Dell monitor spent fortune for the USB-C will only sometimes work.
I'm not sure the reason for this, if its lax standards for it when making devices, cheap components, or mixture of both. I suspect its mostly Chinese based products since they pump them out so fast.
By the way, the 10 devices are just the ones that warranty passed on, i've returned half a dozen more..4 from same manufacturer that the USB-C device didnt flat out work. Finally the last attempt i popped out the case to look inside and it was a total mess on circuit board, they had solder splatter all over that if you shake it can hear it rattle inside. They had some sort of hot glue randomly melted in spots. The actual USB-C connection inside was a wired connection to the board inside of solid connection. lol
I never recommend USB-C stuff to people unless its already on motherboard of phone. Even my older motherboard was first to have USB-C on it was disabled via bios update because they could not get it to work via drivers.
HStewart - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
"Keeping in mind that PNY specifically chose USB Type-C instead of Thunderbolt to maintain compatibility with Apple’s MacBooks and other ultra-thin laptops with 5 Gbps USB 3.0 connectors, 800 MB/s does not really seem as a major performance bottleneck of the drive."Thunderbolt 3 is fully compatible with USB-C which has adapters for lower performance USB 3,0 connectors
repoman27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
What Anton is trying to say is that because this is a USB 3.1 device, it will work with *any* USB host, including Thunderbolt 3 hosts. Whereas Thunderbolt devices, including Thunderbolt 3, can generally only be used with Thunderbolt hosts.The JHL7440 Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controller (which should be available by now) supposedly offers an optional compatibility mode for connecting to USB Type-C hosts (non-Thunderbolt), but I haven't seen any devices that demonstrate this capability yet.
Intel Titan Ridge press release here: https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/new-intel&#...™-3-controllers-offer-displayport-14-and-basic-peripheral-compatibility-u
(Ugh. That URL contains both a ® and a ™, so I'm guessing it will get mangled as soon as I hit "Submit Comment" and can no longer edit this post.)
HStewart - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
What I saying is there devices out that support both TB 3 and USB-C - but it very possible that supporting both means that you don't get the full speed of TB 3 - I did see drives that only support TB 3 that ran 2400MB instead 400 or so.repoman27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
Right, WDC has the G-DRIVE and G-RAID with Thunderbolt 3, and Seagate offers the LaCie Rugged, d2 and big Thunderbolt 3 drives with dual interfaces. However, I believe those devices are implemented using a USB to SATA bridge chip connected to the basic USB Type-C port, a PCIe SATA host controller connected to the Thunderbolt controller, and a SATA 6Gbps 2:1 mux plus a microcontroller to switch between whichever port is in use and the SATA device or RAID controller. Which ends up being both complicated and expensive.There is essentially no practical scenario where SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps limits the performance of even a pair of SATA 6Gbps drives in RAID 0. So the added expense of these dual Thunderbolt 3 / USB 3.x Type-C designs is pointless except for corner cases where you want to support the maximum transfer rates when using a $49 dongle with hosts that have Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 interfaces and lack USB 3.x. It's really only for RAID arrays with more than two drives that this begins to make any sense at all.
repoman27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
To clarify, while all Thunderbolt 3 ports support native USB 3.1 Gen 2 signaling as downstream facing ports (host ports), the JHL7440 is the only controller that supports operation as an upstream facing port (device port). The dual-interface designs currently on the market have 1 or 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports in addition to a separate USB 3.x Type-C port, and only one interface can be used at a time. Much like the multi-interface USB / FireWire / eSATA drives of yore.repoman27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
"The manufacturer specs the drives for up to 800 MB/s sequential read speed, which indicates that there is an SSD a PCIe 3.0 interface inside that communicates with the host via a PCIe-to-USB bridge (ASMedia’s first-gen bridges could barely hit 10 Gbps)."I think you missed a preposition, probably "with" in that sentence.
But also, it indicates no such thing. This is almost certainly just two SATA SSDs in RAID 0 behind an ASM1352R (SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps to dual SATA 6Gbps bridge chip). I have an enclosure with that chip that was released back in 2015, and I've clocked it at over 900 MB/s sequential read / 850 MB/s sequential write with a pair of 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 EVOs in it.
And your parenthetical comment is odd, considering USB 3.1 Gen 2, a.k.a. SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps, is very clearly limited to 10 Gbit/s, before you even account for encoding and protocol overhead. In other words, device throughput numbers will necessarily be less than 10 Gbit/s, so even barely hitting that would be impossible. By my calculations, real world throughput should top out in the 8360 - 8520 Gbit/s (1045 - 1065 MB/s) range.
repoman27 - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
Basically, the Elite-X is just PNY's take on the SanDisk Extreme 900: https://www.anandtech.com/show/10245/sandisk-extre...Nothing exotic here, and in both cases, performance is primarily limited by the SATA SSDs they use, not the Asmedia bridge chip. I'd love to see someone benchmark the ASM1352R with a pair of 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 PROs, as I'm guessing that would be the high-water mark for USB 3.1 Gen 2 performance with currently shipping devices. Given the performance numbers quoted, that may actually be what Angelbird has done with with their SSD2GO PKT XT: https://www.angelbird.com/prod/ssd2go-pkt-xt-1731/
Ynnanandre - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
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