Although it may seem that the industry has gone crazy, the reality is that the PCIe standards They are advancing at a blazing speed. This is all due to the delay with the release of PCIe 4.0, which took more than six years compared to PCIe 3.0. Thus, in 2019, it was announced PCIe 5.0, which is already available in the first motherboards with the 12th generation Intel. However, soon we will see motherboards with PCIe 6.0 for even better performance.
The advancement of PCIe standards is something that benefits all users. The higher its speed, the better the performance that the devices we connect can achieve, since the available bandwidth is higher. Thus, a graphics card can achieve higher performance, an SSD can be faster, and the processor and chipset can manage the connected devices with less power consumption.
PCIe 6.0: 256 GB / s on 16 lanes
PCIe 6.0 doubles the bandwidth of PCIe 5.0. The standard supports up to 64 GT / s, Which is equivalent to 256 GB / s in a configuration of 16 lines. To achieve that speed, the standard will make use of Pulse Amplitude Modulation with four levels, or PAM4as well as a new package management and flow control system.
As is often the case when a new PCIe standard, the PCI-SIG states that it will first come to computers located in data centers, which manage huge amounts of data every second. From there, it will permeate the devices for individuals. However, we will have to wait at least 2023 or 2024 to see the first Intel or AMD boards and processors to support the standard.
Currently, all graphics cards on the market are compatible with PCIe 4.0, and do not offer advantages when using PCIe 5.0. However, as it happened with 4.0 and 3.0, using a current card in a card with PCIe 3.0 can cause some other loss of performance due to bandwidth problems.
SSD drives would reach 25,000 MB / s
The only devices we find fully compatible with PCIe 5.0, and that manage to take advantage of this standard, are the SSD drives. Samsung, ADATA and other companies that manufacture storage devices have already demonstrated the spectacular performance that the PCIe 5.0 SSD units that will arrive this year will have, reaching figures of 13,000 MB / s, compared to the slightly more than 7,000 MB / s that are reached with PCIe 4.0.
Therefore, it would not be surprising if the first PCIe 6.0 SSD drives reach speeds of 25,000 MB / s, which is faster than the speed of DDR3 RAM almost a decade ago. Face to PCIe 7.0, we could find SSD drives as fast as the DDR4 RAM that most computers use today.
In short, it seems that the PCI-SIG it has been proposed to launch a new PCIe standard that doubles the bandwidth of the previous one every three years. PCIe 4.0 was announced in 2017 and the first boards to use it arrived in 2019. PCIe 5.0 was announced in 2019 and the first boards were released in late 2021. So with PCIe 2.0 being announced now, we should see the arrival of PCIe 4.0. first boards in late 2023 or early 2024. With regard to PCIe 7.0, we will have to wait at least until 2025 for its announcement.
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