PCIe 6.0 specifications finalised, PCIe 5.0 bandwidth doubled

(Image Courtesy: PCI - SIG)

The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) has officially released the final specifications for PCI Express (PCIe) 6.0, as the first wave of PCI Express 5.0-compatible hardware rolls out to the market.

PCIe is a widely used connection interface for motherboard components and peripherals, including graphics cards, memory and storage.

The group expects the hardware for the new standard to release in 12 to 18 months, which means we could see the first devices that use the new standard in 2023.

Realistically, we are just getting around to the first wave of PCI Express 5.0 devices, and that standard was finalised in 2019.

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So far, the PCI-SIG has stuck to their goal of doubling bandwidth every 3 years, and began work on PCIe 6.0 right after the announcement for 5.0 was made.

PCIe 6.0's X1 link can now handle bandwidths of 8GB/sec, up from 4GB/sec. X2 links have been expanded to 16GB/sec, X4 to 32GB/sec, X8 has a bandwidth of 64GB/sec and finally X16 can handle 128GB/sec.

The standard was first introduced in 2003, and the sixth specification is now the third major revision of the standard. PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 piggybacked on the established standards set in PCIe 3.0, whereas 6.0 is a more substantial upgrade.

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“PCI-SIG is pleased to announce the release of the PCIe 6.0 specification less than three years after the PCIe 5.0 specification,” said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG chairperson and president.

“PCIe 6.0 technology is a cost-effective and scalable interconnect solution that will continue to impact data-intensive markets like data centre, artificial intelligence/machine learning, HPC, automotive, IoT, and military/aerospace, while also protecting industry investments by maintaining backwards compatibility with all previous generations of PCIe technology,” Yanes added.