TRADE CHAT
Intel’s PC platform problem
YOU CAN READELSEWHERE in this issue about the future of the PC platform— the bottom line is an increase in bandwidth across the board. But the PC platform is not monolithic, instead, it’s bifurcated between Intel and AMD. And increasingly, it looks like AMD will have an advantage for some time.
Jeremy Laird
The issue involves PCIe connectivity, specifically PCIe connectivity for M.2 SSDs. As explained in the platform feature (see page 38), Intel made it first to market with PCI Express 5.0 support with 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs and the 600 series chipset. The catch is that it’s limited to 16 lanes, which means no native PCIe 5.0 for M.2 storage slots, with add-in cards required for most 600 series motherboards to support PCIe 5.0 SSDs.