PCI-SIG has some news about the new PCI Express standard. We learn that PCIe 7.0 is due to arrive this year. With this new standard, we’re talking about a very high bandwidth of 512 GB/s with sixteen lanes. Clearly, storage manufacturers will have the latitude they need to offer even faster storage media!
PCIe 7.0: the standard arrives this year!
Broadly speaking, the aim of PCI-SIG is to double the bandwidth of PCIe every three years. And for this 7.0 standard, we’re expecting high throughput, with bandwidth reaching 32 GB/s for a single lane. Clearly, storage manufacturers will be able to have a field day. With four 7.0 standard lanes, the m.2 interface could have 128 GB/s of bandwidth, enough for SSDs that can read and write at breakneck speed!
On the graphics card side too, this interface could be useful, especially for professional applications, and here we’re thinking directly of artificial intelligence. In the field of video games, however, these benefits could be limited, or even imperceptible, unless it’s to satisfy some marketing need whatsoever. To give you an idea, an RTX 4090 offers roughly the same performance when plugged into a PCIe 3.0 x16 as when plugged into a PCIe 4.0 x16. TechpowerUp tested this in October 2022.
In the meantime, the consortium hopes to continue developing its standard and double the bandwidth every three years. With the 8.0 standard, we therefore expect a bandwidth of 1 TB/s! In the meantime, for this 7.0 standard, we can expect the use of PAM4 signals to increase bandwidth. Otherwise, PCI-SIG is focusing extensively on backward compatibility, improving energy efficiency and reducing latency.
Finally, although the standard is due to be finalised this year, it will not come into force until the next few years. Overclock3D suggests between 2026 and 2028. But before we think about 7.0, let’s focus first on 6.0, which has yet to make its appearance!
