Apple MacBook successfully runs an Nvidia GPU through USB4 using an external docking station – Tiny Corp's coding wizardry unlocks Mac+Nvidia magic
Now, OCuLink isn't some obscure proprietary connection. It was created by PCI-SIG — you know, the guys who create PCI Express standards — and intended for use in big servers, which is why we never really saw it in consumer hardware. There's a newer standard called CopprLink that supersedes OCuLink, but it's not meaningfully backward compatible, which is to say that it uses different connectors and cabling standards. OCuLink was officially deprecated in 2021, as the working group for it dissolved then. The standard doesn't simply go away, though, and neither do all the cables and connectors that were manufactured for it.
OCuLink is preferable for eGPUs used for gaming because it offers real advantages over Thunderbolt. Not only does it offer superior bandwidth and latency characteristics — both important for real-time graphics — but it is also drastically simpler to implement. You miss out on hot-pluggability as well as integrated transport for USB, audio , and video, but those are the trade-offs you have to make for a connection that can be implemented by hobbyists working with hobbyist-grade tools.
While OCuLink is still extremely niche, more recently, we've started to see device vendors out of China feature the connection; primarily, mini-PC sellers like Minisforum and GMKTec, as well as handheld makers like GamePad Digital, Ayaneo , and OneXPlayer, have all started adding OCuLink to their devices specifically for the purpose of connecting powerful external graphics cards. That's exactly what Filip did here with a desktop-class GeForce RTX 4070 card. He hasn't presented any footage of the laptop and its external GPU running a game yet, but it hasn't even been 24 hours since he posted about his success.
Framework itself is now assisting in the effort to make this product functional for its users; the company's Device Software director, Kieran Levin, posted in the thread about two updates that he pushed to improve Framework's firmware tools. Perhaps most critically for DIY-minded Framework users, Filip (who goes by "Terrails" on GitHub) has posted the full schematics on his repository, which you can find here .
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/enthusiast-adds-oculink-port-to-framework-16-laptop-offering-pcie-4-0-x8-bandwidth-for-big-gpu-performance-gains#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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