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New PCI Express Cable Spec Allows External Graphics Cards
By Mark Hachman

The PCI Express Special Interest Group on Wednesday released its first cabling specification, which will permit the PCI Express channels commonly found on PC motherboards to be extended outside of the PC chassis, into products like external graphics cards.

The SIG released the PCI Express External Cabling standard in its completed form, version 1.0. The specification provides for cables and connectors for the standard PCIe configurations: lanes of x1, x2, x4, x8, and x16 widths.

The most intriguing possibility that external PCI Express suggests is an external PC graphics module or chassis, connected to a PC via a cable. However, the cabling solution provides for what the SIG refers to as "platform disagregated I/O," or a "PC" made up of separate storage, CPU, and graphics modules.

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