[yjftsjthsd-h]

Oh, going back to a backplane computer design? That could be cool, though I assumed we moved away from that model for electrical/signaling reasons? If we could make it work, it would be really cool to have a system that let you put in arbitrary processors, eg. a box with 1 GPU and 2 CPU cards plugged in

[mikepurvis]

I believe PCIe is a leader/follower system, so there'd probably be some issues with that unless the CPUs specifically knew they were sharing, or there was a way for the non-leader units to know they they shouldn't try to control the bus.

[bombcar]

But if we're dreaming, we can have the backplane be actually multiple (Nx thunderbird 5 cables connected each slot to all other slots directly).

Then each device can be a host, a client, at the same time and at full bandwidth.

[jasomill]

If every device is directly connected to every other one of n devices with Thunderbolt cables, each with its own dedicated set of PCIe lanes, you'd be limited to 1/n of the theoretical maximum bandwidth between any two devices.

What you really want is for every device to be connected through a massive PCIe switch that allows PCIe lanes to be connected arbitrarily, so, e.g., a pair of EPYCs could communicate over 96 lanes with 32 lanes free to connect to peripheral devices.