I am aware that it is possible to get PCIe retimer and redriver cards allowing you to split up PCIe lanes (for example, x16 to x8/x8). Are there any devices that allow you to do the opposite and combine them? For example, you have two M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots and you want to connect a PCIe 4.0 x8 graphics or network card at full speed. Or (more telling), you have a Framework Desktop with a free PCIe 4.0 x4 slot and a free M.2 slot and you want to put in a fast network card.
Something like this I guess?
IDK how it works though.
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This looks like a good place to start. Thanks!
You can split lanes down but you can’t merge two different slots into one faster slot. The only time you see “combining” is with special setups like NVMe RAID cards or PLX switches, but that’s a whole different thing and not a simple adapter
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I had a feeling that this might be the case - it is easy to foresee all kinds of timing issues, not to mention needing support in the OS.