Would you rather go back to the modem days and call a 'Transfer' a 'Baud'?
PAM encoding is already analog, and also correspondingly more expensive (power, silicon size, etc) for the increase in speed.
It really wouldn't surprise me if even on workstation platforms only a subset of core lanes were Gen6+ and the common slots were redriven Gen5 or less off of a router / switch chip.
> Would you rather go back to the modem days and call a 'Transfer' a 'Baud'?
We don't have to go back, baud is still in use. I would expect transfers per second to be a synonym for baud though, and for bits per second per pin to use a different word.
PAM encoding is already analog, and also correspondingly more expensive (power, silicon size, etc) for the increase in speed.
It really wouldn't surprise me if even on workstation platforms only a subset of core lanes were Gen6+ and the common slots were redriven Gen5 or less off of a router / switch chip.