[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: need hardware config recommendations

[Steve Baker]

ntlug at levelofdetail.com wrote:
> THANKS to those who thoughtfully replied. Very helpful.
> 
> (I especially like that PCI Express and PCI-X are not the same thing.
> Either those wacky engineers or the marketing department really has a
> sense of humor!)

Yeah - dumb name choices.

PCI-X is basically a small protocol tweak and bandwidth increase over
conventional PCI.

PCI-express switches us from a single parallel interface to a
configurable number of serial 'lanes'.  The underlying protocols
of PCI are retained.

The hardware guys seem to be very into serial protocols these days,
we've seen the death of parallel interfaces everywhere from disk
drive (Serial ATA), to printer/scanner interfaces (USB or Ethernet)
and now the PC's main bus.  PCI-express is clearly the 'right'
technology.

I actually believe that PCI-express has the potential to totally
revolutionise the whole computer industry.

One key thing about PCI-e is the idea that these 'lanes' of serial
data are capable of operating over distances of a few feet.  Several
companies I've talked to have indicated that they plan to work towards
a situation where the PCI-e lanes are brought out of the PC on exernal
connectors.

Both of the major graphics companies have suggested that they may move
their graphics products out of the PC case and into a separate box
that would connect into the main PC via PCI-e.

This makes a lot of sense for them because it allows them to choose
their own form factors - to provide their own power supplies and
to arrange for their own cooling.  Power supplies on most cheap
Dell/Gateway machines are nowhere near powerful enough to drive
these $400 graphics cards - and looking at the huge cooling rigs
on some of the latest cards, that is evidently becoming a major
problem for the manufacturers.

Furthermore, it would be perfectly possible for a Laptop to
provide a handful of external PCI-e connectors.  So you could
run your laptop with it's fairly poor graphics when you are
on the road - but when you get home, you could plug in an
external graphics adaptor and get the full power of the
desktop.

If other peripherals went that way, there would be no need
for the PC to have any internal slots at all.  This would
mean that PC's would no longer need to obey a standard form
factor either.

In the limit, we could end up with every PC looking more or
less like a laptop - giving users a choice between lower
power on-board graphics, sound, networking, storage - or
PCI-express connected versions of those things.

I think this could be the final death of the large beige
PC box.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
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