Notebook w/External PCI-e Channels -> Desktop Graphics

I was thinking the other day about what kind of computer I would like to be able to buy in 3 years to replace my new-ish (last 6 months) laptop and desktop, and I had an interesting thought.

ATI and nVIDIAs modular mobile graphics specs are not compatible with each other, so lets put those out of the picture for a minute.

Just bear with me and try and visualize this.

My Ultimate System for 2009 would be a 12" ultraportable chassis, with a quad-core Conroe derivitave, 4GM of DDR3 RAM, and a 200GB 1.8" laptop HD (thanks to Seagate's 4x improvement in drive density), and a 1280x1024 OLED screen. The laptop itself would have an ultra-slim optical drive, just like my Z33Ae does now. Weight around 4lbs. Battery life 10 hours or more.

On the bottom of the notebook chassis would be a docking connector for the extra channels of the onboard 20x PCI-e controller. 1 channel can be used by the ExpressCard slot, the rest go to the doking connector.

The dock itself is relativly small and slick. It contains a single 16x PCI-e slot and some combination of 4x, 2x, and 1x, slots, as well as internal SATA connectors and 2.5" drive bays, and all of the connectors you see on a port replicator/dock today.

When I get home from a weekend road trip, I drop my notebook onto the dock, and the two 30" Cinema Displays connected to the standard desktop graphics card of my choice (completely upgradable) in the dock spring to life, along with the setero system, etc.

Alas, I think that notebook and desktop manufacturers alike would stand to loose too many profits by building such a beast. I don't see why the current laptops providing 1x PCI-e for ExpressCard couldn't grow that capability to provide for a docking system which would give them access to true desktop graphics capabilties, though.

I wish I could buy something like that now... The best of both worlds... I really like my notebook (more then my desktop, really), but mostly because it is really tiny. If I could come home and plug it into a small docking system with a desktop graphics card and a couple more hard drives, I'd be set with one machine.

 

all i can say is keep dreaming

 

i want my two minutes back

 

Been thoroughly discussed, its a good idea, but there are still too many unknowns.

 

I can see one good reason not to do it: trace lengths. PCIe has a maximum allowable trace length, and that's been designed on the assumption that there's only one non-soldered connection. On a laptop, you've got at least two non-soldered connections (laptop to docking station and the PCIe slot inside the docking station). This will probably significantly reduce the maximum trace length. Overall you'd probably have about an inch of wiring to work with - not much, when it has to get from the chipset to a connector on the bottom of the laptop, from there to the docking station, and then to the video card.

In addition to that, you couldn't use the docking station video card with the laptop's LCD, unless you significantly redesign the system (so the screen can take DVI input from the docking station).

After that, you hit the problem of chipsets. For a really ultra-portable laptop you'd want the i945GMS chipset. That doesn't support an external PCIe connection.

Next problem is Windows - it'll probably die if you try to swap video cards while it's running, as well the driver issues from having both GMA950 and an ATI/Nvidia card installed.

Finally, price. Very few people would actually buy an ultra-portable laptop and a top-end video card and a docking station for it (which would be expensive because it'll need a ~150w PSU for the video card). These things would be very expensive to develop. As a result, it'd almost certainly make a loss. Much easier to just make people buy an ultra-portable laptop and a desktop system.