Why is it better at giving access to other protocols like PCI-X, Infiniband, 1Gb/10Gb Ethernet, and an I/O hub on motherboards rather than connecting peripherals directly?
PCI-X is motherboards to expansion card interconnect, while Infiniband and Ethernet are networking protocols and interconnects for linking systems. They are medium performance expansion-bus specifications. The I/O Hub is a very slow speed interconnect between two proprietary chips. These standards are optimized towards the constraints of connecting external components and computer systems, namely with low cost connectors, long cable runs, device sharing, etc. HyperTransport technology is optimized to chip interconnect and can operate at much higher bandwidths by eliminating many of the constraints necessary in expansion bus designs.
