Expansion cards have been with us on the PC for a long time, what’s more, they are even more veteran than the first personal computers. Not in vain, even before the appearance of the Apple II first and the IBM PC later, the S-100 standard existed and could be considered the predecessor of what were the first computers. Well, the latest advances could completely destroy this capacity in future models. Will we be able to expand the PC in the future or is it something that will disappear little by little to produce the much-feared consolidation of computers?
The fact that over time we can cram more and more transistors into the same area has made motherboards more and more simplified to the naked eye. Gone are those years when we saw such a large number of chips that they looked like a traffic jam at rush hour. Now, instead, much of the functionality has been unified on a few chips and other functionality that previously came in the form of expansion cards is now included on the motherboard. It was not uncommon to see a network card, a sound card, and even a hard drive controller on a PC. Today this has disappeared and the trend does not seem to end.
USB 4 will be the engine of change.
The USB 4 thing is a paradox, since basically, rather than being an evolution of USB, it is a variant of Thunderbolt 3 that adds backwards compatibility with USB 3.x of Type-C. And no, we have gone off on a tangent, due to the fact that this has a lot to do with the issue of being able to expand the PC in the future, since it could send the expansion cards to the fret, which justifies the existence of today’s tower computers have motherboards full of expansion sockets.
The usual thing is that in order to reduce the number of interconnections and wiring in a circuitry, what is done is to unify several interfaces into a single one in the middle of the path or transform them into faster ones and reduce wiring. Thus, it is common to see motherboards that unify several USB ports into a PCI Express interface.
What do we mean by this? Well, Thunderbolt actually works as a variant for external peripherals of PCI Express. Which means that a large number of expansion cards could be converted into external peripherals without changing the functionality they now have. The only difference is that instead of connecting to a PCIe socket on the motherboard, we will connect to a USB 4 port. This will cause the consolidation of desktop computers.
How does the consolidation process affect the hardware?
Let’s face it, component and peripheral manufacturers would like to reach the widest possible audience. The problem is that expansion cards that plug into PCI Express interfaces can only be sold to users of a tower computer. Obviously with the consolidation we will not see the end of high-end graphics cards, but the appearance in the form of external peripherals of a series of cards that until now we could find in the form of expansion cards. For example:
- Additional monitor outputs, either HDMI or DisplayPort, which is ideal if you have limited capacity in your PC or need an additional screen.
- High-speed Wi-Fi cards, it will not take long to see Gigabit WLAN connections.
- Nor can we forget network cards with 10 Gbit Ethernet capacity.
- High performance video capture.
- High performance external NVMe SSDs for gaming.
- Low-performance graphics cards for environments such as schools, offices, etc.
The vast majority of these components will end up as part of the motherboard circuitry, but the important thing here is that outside of the graphics card sockets, the rest will no longer make sense inside the motherboard. I mean, maybe the only PCI Express slot left standing is x16 and not even that.
Aren’t we going to see continued advancement of interfaces on the motherboard? Well yes, the difference is that these components can now be obtained in the guise of an external peripheral instead of a card and, therefore, can also be sold to users of laptops with expansion needs.
Changes in energy supply
The other point that we must not forget in this entire consolidation process is the ability of the USB-C ports to be able to power all the external components without problems. Let’s not forget that the standard already officially supports being able to power an external peripheral with up to 240 W. Let’s not forget that a simple PCI Express port, without additional connectors, gives up to 75 W, so getting to power these cards converted into external peripherals will not be a problem.
The end of current boxes and motherboards
Since it is much easier and more convenient for the user to connect the peripheral to an external USB-C port instead of mounting an expansion card. Little by little the external units will go away and over time the expansion cards will disappear in favor of the only one available on the computer being that of the dedicated graphics card. Since for many users they don’t even need a change in that regard and they are satisfied with the integrated graphics of the processor, then the only option to expand that will remain will be the RAM memory. And in some cases, not even this. Since many systems will use LPDDR type memory that is soldered to the board.
And yes, what we are describing is literally a laptop without a screen or rather a lifelong MiniPC in the style of Intel NUC or Mac Mini. Hence the consolidation, since after all a video game console could be defined at the moment as that. What happens is that video game consoles use a series of components aimed at playing games. Using a unified memory configuration of the GDDR type, such as graphics and a chip with a high caliber integrated graphics.
And what could happen with gaming computers?
Now, there are two brands that have the ability to make console-like chips for the PC and speed up the consolidation process to their advantage. The first and from experience is AMD after what was seen on PlayStation, Xbox and Steam Deck. The other is Intel. They can do it in two different ways, one of them is like in laptops, with CPU and GPU on two different chips and unified via a directly wired PCI Express interface and with local memory for both chips. The second is to have a single chip and unified memory.
Today this could be done without problems for small-scale games using a variant of the Steam Deck chip, with integrated graphics with more cores and a 256-bit LPDDR5 interface. If we talk about systems with greater graphic power, the appearance of a memory that replaces GDDR6 will be necessary, but with lower latency. In this case, HBM-type memories already exist, but they are too expensive, so the future will depend on the existence of a new type of memory for the new paradigm that solves this problem.
All this would leave NVIDIA out of the picture in this consolidation process, since the objective would be to reduce the number of chips and thereby reduce costs. And for Intel and AMD it would be getting rid of their most powerful rival in common.
