One of the capabilities of an ngscopeclient-integrated gateware debug suite that I'm most excited about is the ability to do cross triggering and multi instrument integration.

I've wanted simultaneous gateware and analog PHY view of protocol / SI issues for a long time and I'm finally actually working towards making it happen.

@nprofile1q... 300W is a bit nuts for a desktop CPU. My Xeon 8362s have a TDP of 265W and I thought that was high.

Looking at the mobo datasheet, there actually isn't a slot 3 at all (I guess it's meant for a GPU).

So I have slots 6, 5, 4, 2, and 1 to play with.

Slot 4 and 6 are x16, 1, 2, and 7 are x8 (but 2 is physically x16). And it doesn't look like there's any lane sharing, they're all dedicated non-oversubscribed capacity.

There's also another eight lanes on a SFF connector presumably meant for a NVMe backplane but I have no easy way to use that.

So that means...
* Slot 7 USB card has 8 lanes that it's definitely not fully utilizing,
* Slot 6 is an empty x16
* Slot 4 GPU is x16 and using it fully
* Slot 2 NIC actually wants to be x16 but is in an x8 slot
* Slot 1 is an empty x8

I think I'm gonna keep all the current cards where they are. PCIe gen4 x8 is 16 GT/s * 8 lanes = 128 Gbps so after protocol overhead it should still be able to saturate a single 100G pipe, and I won't have enough 100G switch ports (even with the new 100G switch I have on order) to light up the second QSFP28 port any time soon.

So that means I can either put the oculink card in slot 1 (x8) or 6 (x16). According to the Supermicro manual (although I'm not in the BIOS setup right now) both of these support bifurcation down to x4.

So I think I'm gonna put the oculink in 6, leaving 1 vacant. Mostly because the CX6 is probably running hot and I want more space around it for airflow until I get the new fan mount installed on it.

Microscope bench workstation is getting an oculink card. Which one?

It's a Supermicro X12SPi-TF mainboard that currently has a USB controller in slot 7, slot 6 vacant, I think the M.2 is considered slot 5, a GTX 1650 in slots 4 and 3, a ConnectX 6 DX in slot 2, and slot 1 is vacant.

@nprofile1q... No it's a Siglent accessory. I'm sure you could DIY if you're decent at sheet metal work and save a bunch of money but I just wanted something that would work

Once I get them all cabled up including some test signal sources, I should be able to push 32 Gbps (plus protocol overhead) to a single client over 40/100GbE.

Can my GPU handle that? I think FFT is probably going to be a good initial benchmark since VkFFT is so fast. If that won't keep up, nothing else is likely to.