PCI-Sig Announces "CopprLink" PCI Express Cable Name | Hacker News Reader

PCI-Sig Announces "CopprLink" PCI Express Cable Name

phoronix.com

10 pointsmikece6 comments

I wish Oculinm wasn't quite so boutique. GPD Win 4 handheld and Minisforum UM780 have a port but generally consumer gear lacks it.

TB is reasonably close enough, but Oculink I think should hypothetically be cheaper, since can be a physical link rather than needing fancy USB4 transceivers.

I wonder how radical a departure CopprLink is going to be from Oculink, in terms of form factor. Supporting PCIe 6.0 seems like a mighty task!

If that's actually true is just a Rebranding of the OCuLink branding where the Cu in OCuLink there stands for copper! And there are now 2 different makers of gaming Handhelds supporting OCulink ports natively and one Mini PC maker that's got a nice combo-use M.2 port that supports M.2 devices or an OEM supplied custom M.2 to OCuLink adapter that turns that M.2 into a OCuLink port that sits nicely flush with the Mini desktop's case there as if that was a builtin OCuLink Port!

And PCIe 6.0 is just PCIe 5.0's clock rates that uses PAM4 encoding instead of NRZ encoding. So PCIe 6.0 with PAM4 encoding and more bits encoded per clock cycle.

And ETA Prime's YouTube channel is featuring that Mini desktop PC in today's Video(11-14-2023)

And CopprLink is terrible Branding really there as OCuLink is just fine and needs no name change!

I can find no direct link to any PCI-SIG News corroborating this story and the article links to no outside source directly AFAIK.

It's on the PCI-SIG website, I found the announcement in the newsroom under "PCI-SIG® Highlights PCIe Technology as the Interconnect of Choice for HPC at SC23"

https://pcisig.com/newsroom

https://pcisig.com/sites/default/files/newsroom_attachments/...

> PCI-SIG announced the new naming scheme for PCIe Internal and External Cables will be CopprLink™ . The PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 6.0 Internal and External Cable Specifications are currently in development and are targeted for release in 2024.

Too Bad the Phoronix Article did not link there and according to the Phoronix article there maybe be some Trademark issue with a Company's CopperLink branding/naming as CopprLink(PCI-SIG) is just too close there.

This is the first time I am seeing it on their website as well. When writing the article earlier I couldn't find it on their website either... Just the email I received directly from the PCI-SIG press rep.

But yes a rather 'weird' announcement with little detail and Copprlink does show (TM) though can't find it in the USPTO database and does indeed seem odd name given established Copperlink breanding.

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