Gigabyte has announced a Vision-style 10G NIC based on the new Marvell Aquantia AQC113C. Pricing not stated but said to be similar to other 10G Aquantia NICs.
There is no datasheet for the AQC113C on Marvell's site. The 113 comes in 3 flavors: AQC113, AQC113C & AQC113CS, all of which use the same driver which refers to them as simply "AQC-113". It's unclear what the difference is between the current, popular AQC107 and the AQC113 series, both of them have integrated MAC & PHY. The only thing we know about the AQC113 is that it's 6-speed instead of 5-speed, supporting down to the lowly 10Base-T instead of the AQC107's minimum 100Base-T. Maybe some customer asked for that for some industrial reason?
The home page for the AQC series in the "Key Features" bullets lists "PCIe Gen4, Gen3 and Gen2 interface with x1/x2/x4 lane-widths". One of the first implementations of AQC113 was in the M1 Mac Mini 10G version. On that machine, ServeTheHome noted that the PCIe link width was reported as x1 but it still turned in 9.4-9.5 Gbps (however I believe they only tested single duplex, so it could be limited in that way). So one of the three AQC113 versions may be a PCIe 4.0 x1 implementation (AQC113CS? I can't find any photos of the chip in the Mac Mini).
It appears the AQC113C variant remains PCIe 3.0 x4 like the AQC107 since those are the specs of the new Gigabyte card.
Most of the latest AQC products say they have "I-grade support", but I can't find info on what this means. Any ideas?
There is no datasheet for the AQC113C on Marvell's site. The 113 comes in 3 flavors: AQC113, AQC113C & AQC113CS, all of which use the same driver which refers to them as simply "AQC-113". It's unclear what the difference is between the current, popular AQC107 and the AQC113 series, both of them have integrated MAC & PHY. The only thing we know about the AQC113 is that it's 6-speed instead of 5-speed, supporting down to the lowly 10Base-T instead of the AQC107's minimum 100Base-T. Maybe some customer asked for that for some industrial reason?
The home page for the AQC series in the "Key Features" bullets lists "PCIe Gen4, Gen3 and Gen2 interface with x1/x2/x4 lane-widths". One of the first implementations of AQC113 was in the M1 Mac Mini 10G version. On that machine, ServeTheHome noted that the PCIe link width was reported as x1 but it still turned in 9.4-9.5 Gbps (however I believe they only tested single duplex, so it could be limited in that way). So one of the three AQC113 versions may be a PCIe 4.0 x1 implementation (AQC113CS? I can't find any photos of the chip in the Mac Mini).
It appears the AQC113C variant remains PCIe 3.0 x4 like the AQC107 since those are the specs of the new Gigabyte card.
Most of the latest AQC products say they have "I-grade support", but I can't find info on what this means. Any ideas?
