Single home... device?

[pfry]

No worries, always enjoying tech discussions, even if only reading along.

Kind of an aside, on appliances: I do miss the Fortigate (or Cisco/Juniper/etc.*) command line. The GUI was nice to look at, but cumbersome to configure. I use either the "?" method (to view command options) or a no-defaults config dump to view every option, then work up a config. OPNsense has somewhat equivalent functionality from a config load/store perspective, but less interactive; while the XML config backups are pretty extensive/complete, for the full set of options, it's necessary to dig through the GUI.

*...but not Xedia or Wellfleet! (Both used SNMP-based configs, so the Bay Networks/Wellfleet base CLI (not BCC) and the Lucent/Xedia CLI were all get/set MIB values. I think even an SNMP guy like Patrick would balk a bit at that... or perhaps not..

[pfry]

[...]Mobo makers (and PSU's)[...]

I'd think (and likely Patrick's point) is that the PSU would be the interface. What would be your PSU -> motherboard link? USB? As I said, I think the concept is interesting, but impractical. It'd be a tough sell to a PSU manufacturer with already bare-bones margins.

Also this, why do we need SFP+ or RJ45 when USB-C[...]

Yak! Neglecting SFP optics, the USB-C connector is a bit of a cluster. While manufacturers may have moved away from purely manual assembly, it's still not a great design. RJ-45 is pretty terrible from an electrical standpoint, but it was designed to be super cheap, yet effective. I can make my own Ethernet cables pretty easily. Heck, I can even make USB-A/B. But C? Then there would be the matter of cable variety - USB-C for USB is bad enough; just imagine the confusion if you have up to 100M USB-C cables for Ethernet.

And, of course, there's the legacy consideration. And as part of that point, isn't Apple doing much the same? USB/Thunderbolt everything?

[BrandyWine]

What would be your PSU -> motherboard link? USB?

No.
It's a simple pickup by mobo bios, just as my PC bios monitors various temp sensors and can control cooling fans. There's would need to be a "device" between mobo and OS, an Intel chip, and then an OS device driver to grab the info from the chip. Rather simple. The compliant PSU would need to have a filter that feeds signal from line to the mobo chip, systems with modular PSU's have a ton of wires connected to mobo. Systems with integrated PSU have all the wiring on pcb. It should not be difficult at all to achieve. Having one tiny SMD SOIC (1mmx1mm) would be nice to have for the mobo makers, but they have the phone numbers to Intel and the like.

As for USB-C ports, it's more about the ports on devices and less to do with cables. The size of sfp and rj45 on a mobo is just absurdly big. Cables are readily available (cots) and fairly inexpensive. Fiber cables are very expensive in comparison.