Avago

One of the benefits of PCIe switches is that they are designed to be essentially transparent. In the consumer space, I would wager that 99% of the users do not even know if their system has one, let alone what it does or how it uses it. In most instances, PCIe switches help balance multiple PCIe configurations when a CPU and chipset supports multiple devices. More advanced situations might include multiplexing out PCIe lanes into multiple ports, allowing more devices to be used and expanding the limitations of the design. For example, the PEX8608 found in the ASRock C2750D4I which splits one PCIe x4 into four PCIe x1 lanes, allowing for four controllers as end points rather than just the one. Or back in...