Great collection of oddities. The Nvidia PCIe connector thing is frustrating because it's exactly the kind of modular design that should make repairs easier, not harder. Feels like artificial scarcity when replacement parts exist but companies won't sell them. I've had similiar issues with server hardware where OEMs lock down basic components.
NVidia almost certainly sources that part from a supplier who is also selling the same thing to resellers in China, but electronics companies are secretive about supply chains and there are likely NDAs that prevent anyone from saying that publicly
It's anti-consumer behavior. I wish we had a stronger consumer advocacy movement. Seems like the perfect issue for the right to repair folks to look at (unless they already are!)
Minor niggle - an FPGA is a general purposed programmable chip. It’s not specific to reveese engineering old designs. In my work we use them (large numbers of them)
to emulate new designs. Emulators generally are one of the niches where FPGAs do well, as CPUs are too slow, but custom ASICs are too expensive when your production run is small
Great collection of oddities. The Nvidia PCIe connector thing is frustrating because it's exactly the kind of modular design that should make repairs easier, not harder. Feels like artificial scarcity when replacement parts exist but companies won't sell them. I've had similiar issues with server hardware where OEMs lock down basic components.
NVidia almost certainly sources that part from a supplier who is also selling the same thing to resellers in China, but electronics companies are secretive about supply chains and there are likely NDAs that prevent anyone from saying that publicly
Interesting
It's anti-consumer behavior. I wish we had a stronger consumer advocacy movement. Seems like the perfect issue for the right to repair folks to look at (unless they already are!)
Minor niggle - an FPGA is a general purposed programmable chip. It’s not specific to reveese engineering old designs. In my work we use them (large numbers of them)
to emulate new designs. Emulators generally are one of the niches where FPGAs do well, as CPUs are too slow, but custom ASICs are too expensive when your production run is small