any one have sought about the connector’s capability other than gpu or storage? is the pcie connection’s power transfer uni or bidirectional?
if it is bidirectional can it be an additional battery slot?
etc…
it is mindblowing that there will be such connection available in laptop.
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The connector design has pins that allow powering/charging the laptop from the expansion module, so a battery expansion is totally possible. (It has nothing to do with PCIe, though, PCIe is only the data transfer, the module connector can transfer power and data)
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The electrical specs actually allow for an additional batteries and external power supplies.
Specifically:
There’s 6 pins named ADP_GPU and 6 matching GND pins. These pins can take 7.6V to 20V at up to 4.5Amps DC as a power input. That’s up to 90 Watts. It’s unclear if this input can charge the built in battery or just supplement it, but 90 watts would be enough to do that so charging support is likely.
There are also a few pins that link back to a battery controller, so that the OS can estimate remaining time in the second battery, control discharge rate, monitor thermals,
There are also 14 pins named VSYS_GPU, and matching GND pins which provide the bay module 15.2V+ at an unspecified but limited current. However, on AC, these pins provide 20 Volts at up to 10.5 amps DC. Holy shit that’s 210 Watts!!! Now, even the specs say that’s an unrealistically high power supply, and it will be lower due to thermal limits and regulator efficiency.
But putting the 10.5 Amps number on the specs, even if they are not finalized yet, lead me to assume this means the USB C ports will support USB C PD 3.1, which means 240 Watt input over USB C. NEAT!
That, or multiple lower current adapters can be used at the same time, which is neat but also an odd choice
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