Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48444252

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

https://kohlschuetter.github.io/blog/posts/2026/03/22/unlock...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48049828

Points: 106

# Comments: 79

You could also try resoldering new/thicker Twinax wires to old SFP connectors and update the EEPROM. My soldering skills apparently aren't that great. If yours are or you have plenty of old connectors you should give that a try.

AUI: So that's what that port next to the BNC connector on the 3COM 3C509B was for! We've come a long way.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47483586

Points: 52

# Comments: 12

How does this compare to https://github.com/tianocore/edk2-libc and https://libc.llvm.org/uefi/index.html, for example?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965396

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

It all comes down to performance per Watt, the availability of cheap switching gear, and the actual utility in an office / home environment.

For 10 Gbps, cabling can be an issue. Existing "RJ45"-style Cat 6 cables could still work, but maybe not all of them.

Higher speeds will most likely demand a switch to fiber (for anything longer than a few meters) or Twinax DAC (for inter-device connects). Since Wifi already provides higher speeds, one may be inclined to upgrade just for that (because at some point, Wireless becomes Wired, too).

That change comes with the complexity of running new cabling, fiber splicing, worrying about different connectors (SFP+, SFP28, SFP56, QSFP28, ...), incompatible transceiver certifications, vendor lock-in, etc. Not a problem in the datacenter, but try to explain this to a layman.

Lastly, without a faster pipe to the Internet, what can you do other than NAS and AI? The computers will still get faster chips but most folks won't be able to make use of the bandwidth because they're still stuck on 1Gbps Internet or less.

But that will change. Swiss Init7 has shown that 25GBps Internet at home is not only feasible but also affordable, and China seems to be adding lots of 10G, and fiber in general.

Fun times ahead.

There's no driver support on macOS, and for Linux you'd need a bleeding edge kernel. Just trying to physically connect it (along with a connected SFP28 transceiver) to my Mac's Thunderbolt port using an external PCIe-to-TB adapter, macmon tells me a power draw of around 4.3 W, so it's not significantly less for half the bandwidth, but the card doesn't get hot at all.

Although I managed to panic the kernel a couple of times without the extra heatsinks on...

What also may not work are Dell rNDC cards. They look like they have OCP 2.0 type 1 connectors, but may not quite fit (please correct me if I'm wrong). They do however have a nice cooling solution, which could be retrofitted to one of the OCP 2.0 cards.

I've also ordered a Chelsio T6225-OCP cards out of curiosity. These should fit in the PX adapter but require a 3rd-party driver on macOS (which then supports jumbo frames, etc.)

What also fits physically is a Broadcom BCM957304M3040C, but there are no drivers on macOS, and I couldn't get the firmware updated on Linux either.

I measure around +11W idle. While running a speed test, I read ca. +15W.

I think, tragically, the blog post has caused this price increase.

The offers on Amazon are most likely all drop shippers trying to gauge a price that works for them.

You might have better luck ordering directly from China for a fraction of the price: https://detail.1688.com/offer/836680468489.html

Also check the BIOS settings (try setting TB security to "No Security" or "User Authorization")

Some OEM Mellanox cards can be cross-flashed to NVIDIA's stock firmware, maybe that's also relevant.

If you're using an adapter card to add Thunderbolt functionality, then your mainboard needs to support that, and the card must be connected to a PCIe bus that's wired to the Intel PCH, not to the CPU.

If truly concerned, one could use SFP28 to SFP28 cage adapters to have the heat outside the case, and slap on some extra heatsinks there.