Your graphics card does not yet fully exploit PCI Express 4.0? Never mind, the standard is changing with great strides.
Better known by the acronym PCI-SIG, the PCI Special Interest Group brings together the main players in the computer world within an organization responsible for defining changes to the PCI Express standard. And it works hard!
Doubling of flows every 3 years
This is how, during the last year, the precise specifications of PCI Express 6.0 were validated. The compliance program for this future standard should thus be able to start in the middle of next year.
No, it’s not a mistake, we are talking about PCIe 6.0, and this, while the title of our news mentions PCIe 7.0. The reason is very simple, the PCI-SIG works on several versions of the standard at the same time. Thus, while PCIe 6.0 was in draft form, the organization was finalizing the characteristics of PCIe 5.0 which is only beginning to arrive in our PCs.
It is therefore not surprising to see the PCIe 7.0 project progress, since PCIe 6.0 was validated last year. To be exact, this is version 0.3 of what is called draft specs, the draft specifications for PCIe 7.0.
Up to 512 GB/s in 2027
Specifications that endorse a kind of “routine” for PCI Express, since once again, it is a question of doubling the bandwidth between PCIe 6.0 and PCIe 7.0. Doubling that we observe between each generation since the first version.
In this case, this leads us to speeds of 256 GB/s on the x16 and even 512 GB/s due to the use of bidirectional transfer. The PCI-SIG indicates that the signal technique does not change compared to PCIe 6.0 (PAM4), but mentions two major objectives: to improve energy efficiency and to maintain hardware compatibility with the existing one.
This backward compatibility is one of the keystones of PCI Express, and it is hard to see the next generation being able to do without it. A next generation whose final specifications should be finalized before the end of 2025 if we are to believe the PCI-SIG calendar, which then sets the compliance program to current 2027. We therefore still have time to upgrade to PCIe 5.0!
