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what is oculink it sounds like the tech that Dr Octopus uses to control his

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robot arms legs but it's actually an open standard PCI Express connector with

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a compact form factor created to compete with Thunderbolt and USB despite being

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around for nearly a decade oculink has remained a relatively obscure standard

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which is a shame because it's actually pretty awesome oculink stands for

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optical copper link and was initially envisioned as a combination of copper

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and Optical fiber however the need to convert electrical signals into light

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signals and Back Again means that fiber optics are relatively inefficient over

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short distances so the whole Optical element was eventually scrapped though

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the name remains CU stands for Copper's

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chemical symbol which is itself based on Copper's Latin name otherwise it would

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be spelled aink and I think we can all agree that's just terrible AO AOL Link

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acul Link was developed by PCI Sig the

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body ch charged with creating standards for the PCI interface oculink 2.0 the

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most recent version launched in 2017 with a new connector similar to The

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Standard DisplayPort connector it boasts support for up to four PCIe 4.0

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lanes and up to 8 gbits per second per Lane for a total of 64 gbits per second

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of bandwidth though notably an eight Lane version also exists that places the

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four-lane version above both Thunderbolt 3 and four in terms of transmission

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speed and on par with Intel's upcoming Thunderbolt 5 which is supposed to

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launch sometime in 2024 with 80 gbits per second of bidirectional bandwidth

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but only 64 gbits per second of PCIe bandwidth now Beyond bandwidth a primary

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advantage of oculink is that it's far more costeffective that was particularly

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the case prior to 2018 when Thunderbolt became a royalty-free standard but it's

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still true Al be it to a lesser degree simply because it uses cheaper

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components and doesn't require quite the same amount of PR decision to

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manufacture it's that combination of high performance and a lower price point

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which has garnered oculink a devoted following especially on the server side

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now that doesn't mean there's no consumer side applications oculink

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reduces the performance gap between internal and external gpus to a very low

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margin because it's significantly faster than Thunderbolt 3 or 4 but there's an

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important caveat which we're going to tell you about right after we thank jump

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and take the leap with your content okay

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what oculink doesn't do that Thunderbolt does is provide solid support for hot

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plugging with oculink you're typically going to want to shut down the system

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system before swapping components or it might crash oculink only uses PCIe

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signals making it great for connecting a graphics card network card or storage

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controller but Thunderbolt is basically a two-in-one DisplayPort SL PCIe

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connector which can provide video in addition to power and data transfer

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oculink only transfers data so an oculink setup is always going to need at

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least two cables if you want to connect and power a device at the same time not

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to mention that Thunderbolt ports are compatible with USBC cables these

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factors plus having daddy Intel as a backer mean that Thunderbolt has much

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broader adoption in the consumer electronic space and that ubiquity gives

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Thunderbolt a definite advantage in terms of convenience especially For Less

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tech savvy users now you could hypothetically create a version of

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oculink with some or all of the bells and whistles that Thunderbolt offers but

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that might be missing out on what makes oculink truly great Thunder bolt is

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designed to be a generalist connector a jack of all Jacks if you will it's made

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to do several different things quite well wrapped up in a convenient

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userfriendly package but generalization comes at the expense of specialization

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and lower data transfer speeds and throttling are a result of that

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compromise a similarly flexible and multi-purpose oculate connector would

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also probably be far more expensive because when you're combining a bunch of

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complex components exchanging a bunch of different signals in a very very small

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space that demands both creative engineering and extremely precise

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manufacturing otherwise there's going to be interference between these different

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signals and it won't be reliable Thunderbolt 5 is supposed to give us the

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best of both worlds the convenience and versatility of earlier versions of

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Thunderbolt but with far faster data transfer speeds it'll be a while before

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we can see real world benchmarks but I mean that sounds awesome it Bears

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remembering however that so long as these connectors remain a bottleneck and

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performance loss is non-trivial there will always be space for an improved

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version of the oculink or another specialized connector to come along and

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do it better here's open cheers and cheers to you for watching the whole

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video like it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it check out our other

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