hello ..
so when will we see an routerboard capable of using 8 minipcie or even 4 :=)
like routerboard 800 in the minipci version + daughter board…
It seems the MT is tilting towards mini pci-e on newest models, but is there a need for that kind of thing?
yes
A quick search of WikiPedia says that a mini-PCI is 32bit @ 33MHz with a maximum bitrate of 1.067Gbps. Not exactly enough to deal with 3x3 MIMO 802.11ac for example, but maybe enough for an 802.11n link?
Even mini-PCIe with its one lane “should” do 5Gbps (PCIe rev 2). I suspect a proportionally meatier CPU would be required to service the interrupts, etc. though.
PCIe got more “channels” so you can run more than 1G on a mini PCIe system. Intel’s H61 chip set offer:
PCI Express* 2.0 Interface Offers up to 5 Gb/s for fast access to peripheral devices and networking with up to eight PCI Express 2.0 x1 ports, configurable as x2 and x4 depending on motherboard designs.
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/chipsets/mainstream-chipsets/h61-express-chipset.html