I did misunderstand it, because looking at it again now, they spent the entire post talking about how difficult it is to make the cables, except for the very last sentence where they mention die area one time, and it’s still not clear that they’re talking about die area for something that’s inside the computer rather than a chip that goes in the cable.
> Look at the supported lengths and cables. … relatively generic cables. Your USB-C or HDMI connections cannot go nearly as far and require significantly more tightly controlled cables and shielding. … They used a long list of tricks to squeeze every possible dB of SNR out of those cables.
Their point was those systems like hdmi, bits of usb-c etc put the complexity is very expensive very short cables.
Meanwhile a 10g port on my home router will run over copper for far longer. Not that I’m a fan given the power use, fibre is much easier to deal with and will run for miles.
> Look at the supported lengths and cables. … relatively generic cables. Your USB-C or HDMI connections cannot go nearly as far and require significantly more tightly controlled cables and shielding. … They used a long list of tricks to squeeze every possible dB of SNR out of those cables.