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Comment by tomaskafka | Hacker News Reader

I am trying to do the same, and I absolutely don't understand what is happening in the 3-5 seconds while two gigahertz-level machines and a modern monitor negotiate something over tens-gigabit-per-second connection.

If Steve Jobs herded makers of all the parts into a single room, and told them they aren't leaving until this takes 10 ms, I would be immensely grateful and I bet it could be resolved in a week.

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Probably link training.

The very fact that it is a tens-gigabit-per-second connection in an environment full of RF noise (we all love our high powered switching power supplies) makes it hard to get a reliable signal instantly. Still shouldn't take longer than a few hundred ms though (worst case).

The pretty generic TV I use a a monitor apparently keeps the links up with its three inputs, at least for a while after recent use, so switching between two powered computers is quick, about half a second. I started using that rather than a KVM since the KVM caused a retrain, adding several seconds to switching.

A pox specifically on my otherwise delightful samsung OLED, which immediately upon any sort of disconnect event (say, changing the resolution, or restarting the machine) decides to spend 10-15 seconds slow-scanning every other possible input. Exactly none of which have a physical cable attached, and exactly zero of which have ever been used once.

What the devil is taking so long? I'm sure there's some technical reason that the check isn't more instant, but gosh it is frustrating every damned time.

The technical reason is probably that doing it faster wasn't in the specification.

My Acer Predator can disable that option. The downside is specifically for MacOS, the Mac often gives up trying to sync before the monitor has finished its side of things, and since the Acer has a non-configurable, extremely short auto-power-off, so the two get into a death loop.

This frustrates me too, switching takes even longer than 5 seconds for me. I use an external KVM switch (with a physical button) and I run a laptop via a ThinkPad docking station, so two more devices in my case.

For real. So many things do this. I'm particularly frustrated with Bluetooth. Why does it take multiple seconds for two devices to send a minuscule amount of rf data when connecting over known mac?

Probably debouncing, when anything/any events happen, you have to ask yourself, did this event truly happens, or just some weird glitch and can safely ignore it.

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