PCIe 7.0 Offers Double The Transfer Rates of PCIe 6.0, Quadruple The PCIe 5.0 Bandwidth
As expected, PCI-SIG has announced the specifications of PCIe 7.0 which will essentially double the data transfer rate and bandwidth over PCIe 6.0. The new standard also quadruples the bandwidth and transfer rates versus PCIe 5.0 which is the current standard for various client PCs and servers. The announcement was made during the PCI-SIG Developers Conference where the company also celebrated its 30th Anniversary. As per PCI-SIG, the new PCIe 7.0 standard is expected to release to members by 2025 so we can expect adoption in systems by 2026-2027. PCI-SIG technical workgroups will be developing the PCIe 7.0 specification with the following feature goals: Companies planning their roadmaps can include the next generation of PCIe technology with the assurance that it will meet their needs for a reliable, high-speed, low latency I/O interconnect. PCIe 7.0 technology will expand the PCI-SIG roadmap to include data-intensive applications and markets, including 800 Gig Ethernet, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), High-Performance Computing (HPC), Quantum Computing, Hyperscale Data Centers, and Cloud. via PCI-SIG
Delivering 128 GT/s raw bit rate and up to 512 GB/s bi-directionally via x16 configuration Utilizing PAM4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels) signaling Focusing on the channel parameters and reach Continuing to deliver the low-latency and high-reliability targets Improving power efficiency Maintaining backward compatibility with all previous generations of PCIe technology
This is definitely a huge increase over the existing PCIe 5.0 standard which has only started to be adopted by modern client and server systems. The PCIe 7.0 standard offers up to 128 GT/s data transfer rates and can provide a bandwidth of up to 512 GB/s across an x16 lane configuration. For comparison, PCIe 5.0 delivers up to 32 GT/s data transfer rates and 128 GB/s of bandwidth. The PCIe 6.0 standard which is released to members this year will offer 64 GT/s data rates & up to 256 GB/s bandwidth. You might be wondering what actual use is there for PCIe 7.0? At the moment, for client PCs, even PCIe 4.0 is more than enough given the existing hardware. No GPU is out there that can fully saturate the PCIe 4.0 lanes let alone PCIe 5.0. But there are Gen 5 SSDs coming soon that will be able to take full advantage of the higher bandwidth provided by the new interfaces. But the real utilization comes from within the server segment where such high transfer rates & bandwidth are a necessity to handle big data. Also, it’s not like the PCIe 6.0 or 7.0 standards are coming to the market right now, it will take several years for them to enter the server space let alone the consumer segment. But at least we know that the next-gen standards are real and will offer some spectacular increase in transfer rates and bandwidth gen over gen.
