I don't understand what the content of your post, point 1) aside, has to do in any way with the switching card. You seem to be saying that SLI is an additional cost because nVidia have decided to make it one. Yes, ok. What's that relevant to?
As to point 1), again I don't see how it's relevant to what you seemed to be saying earlier. Autoconfig has been commonplace in those things because a) they're mature technologies and b) to the best of my knowledge most don't involve changing the physical connections between components. The only way to do this on the actual southbridge (on A64s) would be to have a full set of 16x traces to the primary slot and a full set of 8x traces to the secondary slot, which is probably a pain in the ass from a board design POV, and requires support from the southbridge, which presumably isn't present on the nForce 4 SB. Until this is done, there has to be some kind of discrete switching solution because there aren't enough PCIe interface pins on the SB to do it any other way. Yes, autoconfig is preferable, but as shown it has to be discrete and the chips are currently reasonably expensive. Yes, economies of scale will push the cost down, but the key word there is "scale", which isn't currently present, and certainly wasn't on release mobos. The fact that SLI boards are in the pipe with auto-switching may mark a turning point, but it's not here yet.
In the meantime, the switching card itself is just the cheapest way of rerouting eight PCIe lanes from one slot to the other, and on my understanding that's all it does - changes the way traces on the board are connected up. How is that a "dongle" on your original definition, or in any way proprietory? Or are you suggesting that nVidia have patented this implementation and are licensing it out?
As to point 1), again I don't see how it's relevant to what you seemed to be saying earlier. Autoconfig has been commonplace in those things because a) they're mature technologies and b) to the best of my knowledge most don't involve changing the physical connections between components. The only way to do this on the actual southbridge (on A64s) would be to have a full set of 16x traces to the primary slot and a full set of 8x traces to the secondary slot, which is probably a pain in the ass from a board design POV, and requires support from the southbridge, which presumably isn't present on the nForce 4 SB. Until this is done, there has to be some kind of discrete switching solution because there aren't enough PCIe interface pins on the SB to do it any other way. Yes, autoconfig is preferable, but as shown it has to be discrete and the chips are currently reasonably expensive. Yes, economies of scale will push the cost down, but the key word there is "scale", which isn't currently present, and certainly wasn't on release mobos. The fact that SLI boards are in the pipe with auto-switching may mark a turning point, but it's not here yet.
In the meantime, the switching card itself is just the cheapest way of rerouting eight PCIe lanes from one slot to the other, and on my understanding that's all it does - changes the way traces on the board are connected up. How is that a "dongle" on your original definition, or in any way proprietory? Or are you suggesting that nVidia have patented this implementation and are licensing it out?
