Solid state drives have done their part in transforming PC performance in the last half decade or so. In fact, SSDs have proliferated so much that they can now be found in external storage solutions. As a result, peripheral connectivity speeds have had to play catch-up. Even with the great leaps in speed made by successive generations of USB, today the commonly used USB 3.0 interface is holding things up.
Professionals looking for something faster will have to look beyond the realms of USB 3.0, and this is where Thunderbolt comes into the picture. Its latest iteration, Thunderbolt 3, is capable of reaching throughputs as great as 5GB/s using the PCI Express 3.0 bus.
Sonnet is aiming at professionals who need first-class performance in an external drive. The Fusion PCIe Flash Drive takes advantage of Thunderbolt 3, as well as Samsung’s excellent SM951 M.2 SSD. The result is a compact external drive capable of transfer speeds up to 2100 MB/s.