Digital Home Thoughts: ExtremeTech: "PCI Express Over Cable Opens Door For Modular PCs"

"Texas Instruments has successfully demonstrated running PCI Express over cabling reserved for Gigabit Ethernet, the first step toward a modular desktop PC. In a week's time, TI will begin sampling an unspecified PCI Express-to-PCI bridge chip, which will include the ability to transfer data over a Cat6 cable, TI executives said. Cat6 cables use four pairs of twisted copper wire, and is the cable usually chosen for Gigabit Ethernet connections.

In the demonstration made Tuesday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) show here, TI combined the PCI Express bridge chip with its own PCI7621 I/O controller that interfaces to smart cards, IEEE 1394, CardBus, and other small form factor flash cards. The chip routed a x1 PCI Express channel over the cable. By separating the I/O from the computing element, TI's new chip could transform the way desktop PCs are designed."

This is an interesting attempt at separating processing and interface elements. So basically instead of a single chassis that contains all the components of the PC, this article claims that we could instead be moving towards a setup where we have different modules (processing, video, I/O, etc) all communicating over the high speed bridge. Replacements and upgrades would become so easy and more cost effective. Interesting idea.