PCI Express over Fiber [video] (youtube.com)

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This was a super interesting video to watch. I honestly thought SFP required more setup, but this explains why AliExpress is so ripe with USB3 and HDMI over SFP converters that are dirt cheap.

Cool project! PCIe itself I think is likely to end up doing something similar soon, there are provisions in the spec now for optical retimers.

There's a number of optical modules for TB3 and TB4, might be an easier (but less fun) route as TB3 and TB4 can carry PCIe.

So you're saying I can put a handful of 4090's out in the middle of snowy Michigan with a handful of OM4 cables snaking into my basement to run legit arctic cooling with no noise?

Blog post for people who prefer reading: https://hackaday.com/2026/04/11/implementing-pcie-over-fiber...

While at a higher level, thunderbolt and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpEther can both of course work over fiber too!

(Q|O)SFP are basically just raw high speed serial interfaces to whatever - you see this a lot in FPGAs, you can use the QSFP interfaces for anything high speed - PCIe, SATA, HDMI…

How does this compare to something like RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE)?

I love the Neon Genesis background, awesome project too.

Amusingly PCIe is talking CopprLink now, which is amusing because it also the expected basis for future optical work (yet has coppr in the name). I'm honestly not sure what if anything it brings vs OCuLink, if relaxes timings at all/allows latency, or if it's just specifying connectors etc. https://pcisig.com/blog/pcie%C2%AE-cabling-%E2%80%93-journey... https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/copprlink-de...

Worth noting too that well respected vendors have been selling optical thunderbolt cables for a while now. I wonder if they are length limited for latency reasons (& hello hollow core fiber)? I wonder if they are usb3/multiprotocol, or if they are usb4 only. I also wonder how they handle the incredibly jank usb4 requirement to also have a separate legacy usb2. As a usb-c enjoyer, I can still admit: sure seems like USB is a lot of work to support! I can't help but wonder how blissfully simple a future CXL over cable stack might look by compare. https://www.owc.com/solutions/usb4-cables

Nothing new here. Samtec were doing this in 2017 https://www.samtec.com/support/videos/pcie-over-fiber-with-f...