A port of a computing device includes protocol circuitry to implement a particular interconnect protocol, where the protocol circuitry is to generate a set of ordered sets defined according to the particular interconnect protocol. The set of ordered sets is generated for a link to couple a first device to a second device and the set of ordered sets comprises link information for the link. Translation layer circuitry is provided to: generate, from the set of ordered sets, at least one data structure to comprise at least a portion of the link information, and cause the data structure to be sent from the first device to the second device on the link in lieu of the set of ordered sets.