Section 07
Bench Notes
Dated notes from the desk: what was read, what was corrected, and what changed on the site.
What this page is
A dated record of the desk's own work: what was read, what was corrected, what was decided and what is still outstanding. It exists so that a reader can tell the difference between a page that has been checked recently and a page that has not, and so that a correction leaves a trace instead of quietly replacing a sentence.
How to read an entry
Each note carries a date and a tag. Reading means a document was read at the source and the pages that depend on it were checked against it. Method means a rule about how this site works was set or changed. Policy means something was refused. Outstanding means a gap is known, named and not yet closed. Correction policy notes describe how errors are handled rather than reporting one.
What will never appear here
No announcement of a specification release presented as news the desk verified, no product launch, no benchmark, no company name presented as a partner and no person named. Where an entry mentions a document, the document is one the desk actually opened, and the entry says when.
The other doors of the publication: Link Basics, Generations, Form Factors, Compliance, Topology and Ecosystem. Every one of them points back to the link speed table.
Dated notes
Readings, corrections and outstanding questions, newest first.
-
What the four figures on the front page count
Method
The four numbers on the home page are per lane transfer rates in one direction, one per generation, and nothing else. They are not bandwidth, they are not throughput and they are not per link: a x16 link at the same generation carries sixteen times the figure shown, and the usable byte rate is lower again because of the encoding. Each of the four is recorded with the document it came from and the day that document was read. The full set of columns lives in the link speed table.
-
Two historical addresses answer again, and only two
Restoration
Two addresses of this domain still receive links from documents in circulation: a catalog roster address, and a document reference inside a chipset datasheet from 2004. Both now answer at their exact historical form with material written fresh from current sources. Every other historical address is answered from a published table: a redirect where a page here covers the same subject, a gone response where the content was deliberately not taken over, and a plain not found otherwise. Nothing is redirected to the home page as a catch all.
-
No membership list is reconstructed here
Policy
The organization that used this domain published a roster of participating companies. That list is not reproduced, in whole or in part. Naming companies as members of a group that no longer exists, on the authority of an archived page, would be inventing a fact about them. What is reconstructed instead is the structure of the catalog, its product categories, which is verifiable from the archived index and is the part a reader can actually use.
-
A specification limit and a common practice are different facts
Rule and usage
Several subjects on this site have a number in a specification and a different number that engineers actually design to. Insertion loss budgets, trace lengths and connector counts all behave this way. The two never share a cell in a table here. Where a page gives a working figure rather than a specification figure, it says so in the sentence, and it says which document the specification figure comes from so a reader can check the gap themselves.
-
Paywalled specifications are named, not paraphrased from memory
Outstanding
The base specification of this interconnect is not a public download. Where a figure comes from a vendor document that quotes the specification, the page says that rather than implying the desk read the specification itself. This is a real limit on what can be published here and it is written down rather than smoothed over. Reducing it is a reading task, not a writing task, and it is the first item in the queue.
-
Illustrations set a scene, they never prove a measurement
Policy
The photographs on this site show benches, boards, connectors and instruments. None of them is evidence that a particular part, configuration or measurement exists. A caption describes what is visible in the frame and nothing more. Where a page discusses a measurement, the measurement is described in the text with its conditions, because a picture of an instrument is not a result and should never be captioned as one.
-
This desk cannot tell you whether a part is compliant
Scope
Readers write to ask whether a specific controller, cable or module is compliant. The desk cannot answer that and will not guess. Compliance is a result recorded by the body that runs the program, on a defined set of tests, on a date. What this site can do, and does, is explain what those tests look at and which document holds the answer, so that a reader knows where to go and what to ask for when they get there.
-
Corrections are dated, never silent
Correction policy
When a factual claim on this site turns out to be wrong, the page is corrected and a note appears here with the date and, where the meaning changed, what the page used to say. Pages are not deleted to make an error disappear and revisions are not backdated. A correction that arrives with a document reference attached can usually be verified the same day; one that arrives without has to be researched from scratch and takes longer.