Hmmm.... Wondering if this could be eventually used to emulate a PCIe card using another device, like a RaspberryPi or something more powerful... Thinking the idea of a card you could stick in a machine, anything from a 1x to 16x slot, that emulates a network card (you could run VPN or other stuff on the card and offload it from the host) or storage (running something with enough power to run ZFS and a few disks, and show to the host as a single disk, allowing ZFS on devices that would not support it). but this is probably not something easy...
Something like the stm32mp2 series of MCUs can run Linux and act as a PCIe endpoint you can control from a kernel module on the MCU. So you can program an arbitrary PCIe device that way (although it won’t be setting any speed records, and I think the PHY might be limited to PCIe 1x)
interesting... x1 would too slow for large amounts of storage, but as a test, a couple small SSDs could potentially be workable... sounds like im doing some digging...
Tangential question: PCIe is a pretty future-proof technology to learn/invest in,
right? As in,
it is very unlikely to become obsolete in the next 5-10 years (like USB)?
Curious what you mean by learning? Learning about TLPs? Learning about FPGA DMA Engines like XDMA? Learning about PCIe switches / retimers? Learning about `lspci`?
Neither of those is going to be obsolete in 5 years. Might get rebadged and a bunch of extensions, but there's such a huge install base that rapid change is unlikely. Neither Firewire nor Thunderbolt unseated USB.
Hmmm.... Wondering if this could be eventually used to emulate a PCIe card using another device, like a RaspberryPi or something more powerful... Thinking the idea of a card you could stick in a machine, anything from a 1x to 16x slot, that emulates a network card (you could run VPN or other stuff on the card and offload it from the host) or storage (running something with enough power to run ZFS and a few disks, and show to the host as a single disk, allowing ZFS on devices that would not support it). but this is probably not something easy...
> emulate a PCIe card using another device
The other existing solution to this is FPGA cards: https://www.fpgadeveloper.com/list-of-fpga-dev-boards-for-pc... - note the wide spread in price. You then also have to deal with FPGA tooling. The benefit is much better timing.
Something like the stm32mp2 series of MCUs can run Linux and act as a PCIe endpoint you can control from a kernel module on the MCU. So you can program an arbitrary PCIe device that way (although it won’t be setting any speed records, and I think the PHY might be limited to PCIe 1x)
interesting... x1 would too slow for large amounts of storage, but as a test, a couple small SSDs could potentially be workable... sounds like im doing some digging...
… or pcie over ethernet ;)
Tangential question: PCIe is a pretty future-proof technology to learn/invest in, right? As in, it is very unlikely to become obsolete in the next 5-10 years (like USB)?
Curious what you mean by learning? Learning about TLPs? Learning about FPGA DMA Engines like XDMA? Learning about PCIe switches / retimers? Learning about `lspci`?
Neither of those is going to be obsolete in 5 years. Might get rebadged and a bunch of extensions, but there's such a huge install base that rapid change is unlikely. Neither Firewire nor Thunderbolt unseated USB.
Might as well be replaced by optical connectors next years, but who knows in advance. Currently there is no competition
even though it would be optical, it still is using PCIe protocols in the background...
that is a huge win if you are developing drivers or even real hardware. it allows to iterate on protokols just with the press of a button